Ancient Magic
by Headmistress X
Summary: Minerva understands why one ought to be very, very careful. f/f
1. Hands

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters/But if I did/I'd buy a big house where/we all could live  
AN: Each chapter was inspired by another work of fanfiction I have read and enjoyed.

The hands in Minerva's hair don't know what they are doing. Oh, they brush the long, dark hair lovingly, gently and with grace. The fingertips, where they massage Minerva's hungry skin, work an advanced magic. With each stroke, Minerva feels reality crack open, feels those fingers apply insistent pressure at vulnerable spots, feels the fissure widen until a chasm opens up before them. Dark. Ancient. Minerva feels herself dangling above it, held in place only by the thinnest thread of self-control.

No, her seducer does not suspect. She is a grown woman with nearly grown children, but she is still young enough to live entirely within her own skin. Even as her hands negotiate an unconditional surrender, even as she sends Minerva tumbling over that edge, even as she falls with her, Hermione does not truly understand.

But Minerva knows. She knows that soon (Minutes? Months?) she will shift position so as to make herself more available. It will be subtle. Hermione might only understand that she is suddenly bold enough to trace the line of Minerva's neck, brush past her collarbone, push down to gather the softness of a breast into her palm.

Minerva knows that soon, there will be kisses; that the self-conscious, exploratory and analytical kisses of this ritual will give way to the heedless, hard and selfish kind.

Hermione does not know that soon, Minerva will spread her legs. She'll guide that lovely, willing mouth to her center, arch her back, lose control of her own voice.

"Yes. Oh my god, yes," she'll say, and mean it.

And there will be no taking it back. Ever.


	2. Lark

_Lark. Zap._

This morning's alarm is the song of a lark. Sometimes, it is a cock's crow. Sometimes, it is a peal of thunder. Sometimes, to Hermione's everlasting distress, it is the bagpipes. Not knowing which sound to expect each morning makes it that much more difficult for Hermione to keep her eyes closed.

_Growl. Heavy breathing and a swallowed groan._

These are the sounds Minerva probably isn't even aware of making as she comes to consciousness each morning, pushes back the blankets, scrapes into her slippers and stumbles toward the bathroom.

_The silvery sound of running water changes in pitch and tempo as a body moves beneath it._

_Fwip fwip fwip_. Hair is lathered.

_Splish splash splush_. Shoulders, breasts, belly and thighs are soaped, rinsed, dried in the soft susurrations of a towel.

Hermione inhales deeply. She hugs Minerva's pillow to her chest and keeps her breathing steady as she listens.

_Flick, swish and scrub._ Tooth-wanding.

_Hisssssss._ Hair-drying charm.

_Clack_. Wooden wand is placed upon a porcelain sink.

_The expressive near-silence as thin, white hands and arms work the long and impossibly silky hair that no one but Minerva herself can bind._

_Whoosh. Thunk._ The bathroom door opens and closes.

Hermione loves beginning each morning in the revelation of intimacy. It is the closest she can come to observing Minerva as she might be when alone, natural, unselfconscious.

It is important to remain still even as the slight pressure of Minerva's weight bends the mattress just inches away, even during the long seconds of quiet when Hermione knows she is being watched.

In a few minutes, she will wake up. She will yawn and stretch and watch almond-eyed as Minerva dresses, as she transforms herself from Hermione's lover into the Headmistress of Hogwarts.

But not yet.

Now is the rustle of Minerva moving beneath a tartan gown, her gentle breathing as she bends close, the brush of lips against Hermione's cheek, so soft that only the downy hairs of her flesh are disturbed. It is an act of iron will not to shiver.

The creak of the mattress means that Minerva is moving out toward the kitchenette and a strong cup of tea. She has a wonderful efficiency, Minerva does. She does not waste her morning on any task that isn't completely essential to her.

_Lark again_. And Hermione opens her eyes, grinning.


	3. Shelling

AN: This thing is just coming to me in bits.

The child is lurking.

Minerva is shelling peas by hand, finally relaxing into the fullness of summer, enjoying the cool breeze and green scents under the bower in her private garden. Of course, it isn't so private anymore. Hermione has come home with her. (Truly, has been carried over the threshold in a giggly bit of wandwork. Minerva blushes at the memory. Who knew love could still make such a besotted fool of a woman in her tenth decade?)

Rose and Hugo are staying for a few weeks as well. Truthfully, she's glad they have come. It is right that they have a place at McGonagall Manor.

"Well, it's only two teenagers," Molly had said to her, winking. Only two teenagers. There is no such thing as only two teenagers and Molly well knows it. Like attracts like. It is a fundamental rule of nature. So Rose and Hugo came, and were visited just last weekend by James, Lily, Albus and Teddy. The oddness of spending part of one's summer holiday in the home of one's headmistress was conveniently offset by the sudden crowd of local wizarding boys that appeared, it seemed, as soon as Rose and Lily set first foot outdoors. On Saturday afternoon, there were enough of the local boys (each of whom seems to be named Ryan, of all things) loitering about to hold a Quidditch tournament in Minerva's sheep meadow.

With homemade brooms and improvised bludgers, the final match devolved into a flying free-for-all. The only thing that counted was that there were enough bandages and butterbeer to go around.

Minerva McGonagall is famous for several things. She is a master of transfiguration. She is a respected warrior and tactician. Her chess game is legendary. Oddly, few people remember to give her credit for her most obvious skill.

She is really quite good at teenagers.

Which is how she knows that the girl carefully circling her perimeter isn't really wandering aimlessly. And when she finally finds the courage to approach, it will not be the casual accident she'll make it seem.

Minerva takes the basket of peas from the bench beside her, puts it on the ground at her feet, and waits. It doesn't take long.

Rose has her mother's curls and height, her father's coloring and freckles, and something, Minerva believes, of her uncles Fabian and Gideon around the eyes. She is such an amalgam of so many people Minerva has known and loved that it isn't possible to view her objectively. Of course, she is never any more or less than fair in her treatment of any child in her care, Rose and Hugo included. Perhaps, Minerva muses, Rose and Hugo especially.

What must it be like for them? Do their classmates tease them? Are they subject to the lingering prejudice against same-sex relationships that she and Hermione sometimes face as adults? Are they resentful of where their mother's heart has led her?

Minerva's hands work faster and her lips form a tight line as she thinks. How does she even begin to answer these questions? Is it her place to try? Would approaching the subject make matters better or worse for the young lady beside her?

The subject does not come up. The facts of Minerva and Hermione's living arrangement have been put before the children, obviously. But never, as far as Minerva knows, have the reasons for them been openly discussed.

Minerva is not overmuch perturbed. In her opinion, society has lately placed too much faith in the value of openly discussing all manner of silliness. Discretion does not necessarily imply shame. There is value in guarding the sacred as well.

"Blimey," says Rose.

Minerva stops, nonplussed. Her eyes grow even larger behind the square-rimmed glasses. Legilimency? What has she given away?

Then she sees Rose pull a few peas from the pile. Inexperienced fingers fumble at the shelling. She loses two of three in each pod, wiggling in an effort not to sit on the ones that get away. When she finds one that has fallen to the ground, she examines it, shrugs, and pops it into her mouth.

Minerva smiles. She holds her hands away from her body and demonstrates proper technique. When Rose chooses another pod, Minerva covers the girl's small fingers with her own and guides her through the little pop-and-swish movement. For just a moment, she remembers learning to do this in just this way in just this spot. Whose hands covered hers then? Was it mother or an aunt? Rose notices that her movements have momentarily stilled and looks up questioningly.

Minerva offers a crooked grin. "Can't remember who taught me this," she admits.

Rose tries a few on her own, clumsily at first, but she gets most of the peas in the basket. "Whoever did," she murmurs, "You've obviously practiced."

"For nearly a hundred years," Minerva replies, her voice as dry and crisp as paper.

Rose frowns. She concentrates on her task. Insects buzz. Hugo goes whooping about somewhere in the distance. Minerva tries to remember any happier day in her life and fails utterly.

"You'll be the prettiest centenarian around, anyway," Rose says.

Minerva Humphs.

"No, honestly. Look at Augusta Longbottom! Uncle Neville says you were at school together and you're much handsomer than her. Than she."

"Always have been," Minerva asserts, raising an eyebrow and glancing sideways at her companion.

Rose's laughter comes out with a snort and the smile stays on her lips. She confidently shells a few more peas. "Professor McGonagall, may I ask you a question?" The girl asks as the smile turns tentative.

Inwardly, Minerva has several simultaneous realizations. One is that neither of Hermione's children has addressed her directly for many weeks. Her formal title probably seems less than appropriate to the situation. But neither she nor Hermione has thought to offer them a substitute.

But that concern is soon drowned out by another.

_Oh my_, Minerva's panicked mind conjures, _She's going to ask if I'm sleeping with her mother._

It's a legitimate question. After all, Hermione was Minerva's guest many times before their intimate relationship began. Their friendship is long-standing. They do maintain separate bedrooms. Any affection they might display in front of the children is strictly—well—friendly. And perhaps the notion of a romantic relationship between the girl's mother and the ancient headmistress strikes Rose as ridiculously beyond the realm of possibility. Ronald, after all, has remarried a lovely twenty-four-year-old Hufflepuff. Minerva's hands tremble. Has she even the right to answer that kind of question? Shouldn't Rose be asking her mother?

Outwardly, Minerva McGonagall cocks an eyebrow and says, "Hmm?"

"Are you," Rose begins, squirms, then begins again, "Are we," she manages, then puts down the peas, sits back against the bench, stares straight ahead and whispers, "Do you," there is a long pause while she takes a deep breath, "Belong to me?"

Minerva stops. Her hands lay forgotten in her lap while she simply looks at the girl. "Excuse me?" She asks.

"I mean," and Minerva can see the agitation in Rose's face as she struggles not to flee this suddenly humiliating conversation, "To us. To Hugo and me, I mean." Her eyes nearly close, "You know?" She adds hopefully.

Minerva is dumbstruck. What is she to say to this girl who has unwittingly rearranged Minerva's entire sense of self? This girl sitting fearfully beside her, wearing her heart on her sleeve? She needs to tell her something, and fast. But if she doesn't take a moment to compose herself she will end up confessing that her heart has just melted and puddled at Rose's feet and that now would, in fact, be an excellent time to ask for an outrageously expensive Christmas gift. Liechtenstein, perhaps.

Minerva leans back, mirroring Rose. Eyes forward, hands folded, peas momentarily forgotten, they pause for a long, long breath. Bees buzz. Slowly, without turning, Minerva slips an arm around her companion's small, tense shoulders. An unruly curl falls over Rose's right eye. Minerva brushes it back, tucks it behind an ear. Even before Minerva speaks, she feels the girl's body relax into the embrace.

"Aye," Minerva says, "I daresay I do."

"Oh. Erm. Thought so."

"We shall have to continue to be circumspect about it, however," Minerva says, "At Hogwarts, you should address me as 'Professor' or 'Headmistress'."

"Right," Rose says. She pulls her legs under her on the bench and leans into the conversation. "So there's this other thing I was wondering."

"And what is that?"

"Whenever we're out, Ryan and Bryan and Brodie and Ryan and the rest, I mean," she reaches up to hold Minerva's dangling hand without slowing down, "And we're planning to do something together, they always tell me I've got to go home and ask my Minnie."

"Yes?" Minerva cannot find the question, aware only that she is, for the first time in her life, holding her own child in her arms.

"Well, where do they get off calling you Minnie?" Rose asks, indignant.

"Ah," Minerva nods, "D'ye know what that word means?"

"Minnie?"

"Tis the Highland diminutive of 'mother', you see."

Rose thinks about this. Her eyebrows dance, tracing the complexities of her thought process. "So it isn't about your name, then?"

Off in the distance beyond the May roses, low banks of dove-grey clouds roll up the hillside. There's a fine, soft evening in the making. They'll eat their supper of fresh vegetables picnic-style, Minerva decides, at hearthside.

"I don't know," Minerva whispers, "Is it?"

Rose considers, moving even closer into the warmth of their circle as the breeze picks up and rustles the leaves around them. "Not at school, though," she says, seriously. "If anyone else ever called you Minnie, I'd have to hex them."

"I hear the bat-bogey hex is particularly effective," Minerva says, and scoops the remaining peas from her lap into the basket before leading Rose into the house.


	4. History

At first, Hermione is cheerfully willing and Ron is avid, if not artful. They get by on enthusiasm and youth for a long time before the babies come. It is only after parenthood, when fatigue and familiarity start to trump hormones and novelty, that Hermione realizes there is something wrong with her. She hears things—Ginny and Fleur whisper tipsily in the corners of family gatherings—that she should know are exaggerations. And the media can't be trusted. It uses sex to sell everything. Even the pornography that Ron looks at when he believes she doesn't know—Hermione should know better.

But so much of it seems so exciting at the time. And she lies in her bed beside a snoring Ron and she aches. Aches. Wants. Needs. She's always had a dangerous imagination. At night, it runs away with her. She wonders if this is what it must have been like for Harry to carry such evil around inside of him for so long.

Her problem—the perverse nature she harbors--becomes clear to her in little ways. Comfortable in Ron's arms, she tries to initiate something she's always been curious about (turning over, turning sideways, using a mouth where a hand has always been or a hand where nothing has ever touched) only to find Ron stopping, pulling away, looking reproachfully at her until she withdraws and behaves.

The desires that simmer in her tainted little heart are almost impossible to talk about. The vocabulary alone makes her feel silly and wrong. But when she works up the courage, under cover of darkness and sweat and arousal, to whisper something of them into Ron's ear, she finds her answer in his shocked withdrawal and in the hardness of his shoulder as he turns his back on her and retreats to his own side of the bed.

It would be enough on some nights if he'd just open his eyes and look at her while he is inside of her.

Shame is an excellent teacher. Hermione, the brilliant student, learns quickly enough. What decent woman would want the things she wants? What kind of deviant is she? What kind of _mother_, for Merlin's sake?

She apparently disgusts him so thoroughly and for so long that he eventually stops wanting her altogether. He satisfies himself with magazines and a quick yank in the loo before showering each morning. And Hermione, at thirty-seven, is left to shiver miserably in the bed they share. If he is right, then her desires are wrong. She shouldn't still want him. If he is wrong, then he is a bastard and she shouldn't still want him.

Even as she leaves him, she knows that her own ravenous hunger for another human being, for a joining so profound it wipes out every boundary she's ever longed to transgress, is an illusion. At best, it is a silly romantic fantasy. At worst, it is a pitiful neurotic weakness.

When she woos and finally wins Minerva McGonagall, it is with a realistic understanding of love's limitations.

Which is why, one summer night with the bedroom windows open and the wind blowing up a clishmaclaver to harmonize with the happy roaring of two sweaty, wild-haired women on a tartan quilt, when Minerva gutturally requests—no, more like demands_—_something deliciously, lavishly, wonderfully _dirty_, Hermione freezes.

_Did I hear that right? Is it some kind of test? That can't mean the same thing to her that it does to me, can it? She couldn't know…_

Minerva takes the sudden stillness for license. She slowly rolls into a position that makes clear the precise nature of her desire. The tension in her slim neck eases as she drops her head, stretches the muscles in her back, undulates her hips into the lovely torture of anticipation.

_How could she? How could she? _

Hermione has read the kind of bad novel in which the heroine reaches the point where something tears free inside her. This involves loincloths and laced bodices. She has always believed it to be a load of rubbish. She still does. It isn't a tearing. It's more of an unhinging. All the appendages of her body unhinge themselves at the narrowest part and wobble dangerously. Arms, legs, neck. Hermione feels herself held at knife's edge. And it is in the cleaving of her brain from her body that she notices the utter vulnerability of Minerva's position. It is in the disintegration of senses and self that she feels the corresponding power of her own.

She moves upon her lover. It is an act of self-preservation.

Later, after Minerva howls her pleasure, after she collapses, whimpering and struggling to catch her breath, after Hermione's eyes go wide as full moons in the dark, Minerva turns. She bites and licks the salty skin along Hermione's shoulder. She snakes a hand up Hermione's thigh. And as that hand cradles Hermione's swollen sex, she hoarsely whispers, "Your turn."

* * *

Outside, the wind still howls. Inside, Hermione feels Minerva's arms around her. She clings to the thin, strong body and wills herself not to sob. Minerva strokes Hermione's bushy curls away from her face, shivers, turns up the corners of her mouth in pretty chagrin. 

"It has always amazed me," Minerva says, "The things one wants on the way to orgasm that one cannot imagine wanting after an orgasm."

Hermione means for her reply to sound like a murmur of assent. It comes out as choked laughter.

Minerva tightly squeezes Hermione's shoulders and whispers, "No man can call himself an Englishman who has never stumbled out of the whorehouse at dawn so drenched in self-disgust that he wants to fling himself into the Thames."

"Who—who said that?" Hermione asks.

"I did. Just now," Minerva replies, "Is there someone else in this bed I should know about?"

"No. No, I mean that I think I've heard it before."

Minerva yawns, stretches, wiggles her toes and flexes her trapped arm. "Oh. Well, I could have gotten it from Albus. God knows I lost track of where he ended and I began more than once over the years." Her voice is heavy, her brogue thick as she slides toward sleep. Soon, she is wrapped up in the sheets under the quilt, so exhausted she doesn't even do the tossing and turning to which Hermione has grown happily accustomed.

Hermione does not sleep. She wonders. She wonders and she keeps uneasy watch through the night.

* * *

A/N: The bit about the Englishman is a paraphrase of a real quote, the source of which I cannot recall. Anyone who finds it and its attribution will get one free ficlet based on the prompt of her choice. 


	5. Gift of the Magi

Since it is probably about time for another disclaimer, I will admit that this is Jo Rowling's world. We just live in it.

A/N: Believe it or not, this collection of bits will eventually add up to a story. Today's offering will seem especially out of place. In fact, I've posted it as a stand-alone under a different rating. I promise that it will all, eventually, make sense.

Thank you to everyone who has been kind enough to review my work. Gift of the Magi is dedicated to the wonderful and wicked fanfiction writers from whom I have lifted the funny parts.

**Summer Solstice, 1998**

The marble staircase in the entrance hall is swarming with men wearing shirts that say _Mumford's Magical Masonry and Gargoyle Repair_. At the foot of the spiral staircase that will lead him to Headmistress McGonagall, Harry finds one of the workers seated on a block of unhewn stone, notepad in hand, compassionately concentrating on the wreckage of the statue that once guarded the door. Harry slips past unseen as he hears the Griffin saying, "I stood my post as well as anyone, I did. Took a bloody explosion to dislodge me, didn't it? And next thing I know there's the big HERO stepping through my bits and pieces, not a word of acknowledgement for my sacrifice…," The voice fades as Harry climbs the unmoving steps.

As he stands upon the landing, he hears muffled, angry voices from beyond the wooden door. He knocks. McGonagall opens the door, sees nothing, and says, "Come in, Harry."

He is Harry now. She is still Professor. He hasn't yet worked up the courage to try out _Minerva_.

The office and private quarters beyond are furnished with little except packed crates tied up with tartan ribbons. The Headmistress herself sits down on a low purple sofa beside the window. She gazes out the narrow tower window at something Harry cannot see.

Usually, Minerva McGonagall inhabits the soft-focus land that lies somewhere between fifty and death. Today, her age is clear. Harry wonders if the extended middle age of witches and wizards isn't mostly some kind of a glamour connected to energy and mood. That would explain all those fairy stories he read as a child where beautiful, powerful sirens reveal themselves to be ugly old crones. Although, if Minerva McGonagall is a crone, she is one of the prettiest Harry has ever encountered. The realisation shocks him.

"What progress down there?" She asks, still looking out the window.

Harry knows that she has accepted the post of interim headmistress grudgingly. With all her heart, she wants to retire. Privately, he sees her point. She's given enough. They all have. It is possible, Harry well knows, to give one's life for a cause and still remain among the living. But Minerva McGonagall is a creature as devoted to duty as Harry himself. He stays where he is needed and she stays where there is productive work to be done.

Besides which, the thought of going off on holiday just makes him feel tired. And there is so much that is broken. At least McGonagall seems genuinely grateful for his company.

His head pops out of the invisibility cloak.

"Progress?" She reminds him.

"Early stages of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The workman says actual reconstruction might begin as early as next week."

McGonagall laughs mirthlessly and there is a shrill edge to her voice when she says, "Which means next month?"

Nodding, Harry agrees.

"And how are you?" She asks.

The rest of his body emerges from the cloak. She is peering at him over the top of square spectacles. He tries to shrug indifferently, then gives in to a lopsided grin. Close scrutiny still embarrasses him, but he sort of likes it when she looks at him like that. All at once, in this context, he recognizes the expression he so treasures from Minerva McGonagall as the same one he always found so discomfiting on Headmaster Dumbledore.

"You looked just like him. Just now," he says, gesturing toward Dumbledore's portrait on the wall behind McGonagall's neat desk.

She raises an eyebrow.

"But infinitely more alluring!" Dumbledore's portrait interjects.

"Right," Harry deadpans, "What he said."

"And how are you?" She repeats more pointedly.

"Actually," he says, and takes a seat beside her. His jeans and t-shirt seem inexcusably shabby compared to her crisp green work robes. He's not entirely sure what to do with his arms and legs. Only one week into this new adult relationship with the world, he hasn't quite got the knack of it. She waits with an expression of affectionate interest.

Weird.

He clears his throat and begins again, "Actually, I've been doing sums."

"Oh?"

"Yes. One botched transfiguration per week times an average of twelve students per form times seven forms times four houses times thirty-five weeks in a school year times approximately forty-three years of teaching comes out to just over half a million messes to be cleaned up. Half a bloody_ million_, Professor. How do you put right more than half a million broken bits?"

"Oh, my," she says, "You make it sound so overwhelming! It isn't half a million. It's only one. One at a time, you see, and oh I suppose you think you're _dead_ clever right now, don't you?"

He blushes. "Depends. Are you feeling less overwhelmed?"

"I know I am," Dumbledore's portrait cheerfully volunteers.

"Nobody asked you, you old Nutter," she shoots back.

Blood rushes to Harry's face so furiously, he's surprised that the tips of his ears don't explode. Dumbledore's portrait is chuckling. Professor McGonagall is scowling. The other headmasters are whistling or feigning interest in the details of their frames. And Harry is wondering how adult conversations with Dumbledore and McGonagall have come to so closely resemble all those adolescent conversations with Ron and Hermione.

"I'm not precisely overwhelmed. Underprepared, perhaps. Have you ever heard of the Peter Principle, Harry?"

"Does it have to do with Gamp's Law?"

"More Murphy than Gamp. The Peter Principle says that in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence."

He thinks about this. "No," he concludes, "Same job. More students. See?"

To Harry's astonishment, she seems to give his words careful thought. It is disorienting. He feels as if he has leaned against a mountain and accidentally dislodged it. Mt. McGonagall pushes the hair out of her eyes, and, finding that there is no stray hair to correct, settles for pushing the hair out of his eyes. "It is difficult," she says, "For me to imagine myself as Hogwarts' ultimate authority. It must be similarly difficult for you to imagine yourself as my—well—friend. Or have your ears turned purple for some other reason?"

"Beet Curse," Harry asserts. And because now seems like an excellent time to change the subject, he reaches into his trousers pocket and pulls out the yellowed piece of parchment that is the reason for his visit. "I've brought you a gift. I think it might help."

She takes the folded paper from his hands and examines it. Harry has tried, but he has not been able to diminish the smell of footlocker and boy that clings to the parchment. But there's obvious magic in it, as well. McGonagall unties the ribbon. Her eyes go wide.

_Greetings, Professor McGorgeousGal _writes itself in untidy script across the page.

_Groan_ appears next, in a smaller, neater hand.

_That's the best you can do, Pads? _Scrawls itself in a margin. Aha. That's his father's writing. He'd wager his wand on it.

The untidy script appears again. It says_ Quite right. That was bad. Very bad. I probably deserve to be spanked._

_Me, too _shows up in a new hand.

_I'm in! _appears in Remus Lupin's neat lettering.

_But one at a time, right? _James again.

Minerva refolds the paper and looks at Harry, whose gaze is suddenly riveted on the window. He is calculating his chances of surviving the fall when she says, "I am to be assisted by this posthumous mash note?"

"Touch it with your wand," Harry uses a finger to demonstrate, "And say, 'I solemnly swear I am up to no good'."

She takes her wand from her robes, notes the fading light in the room and uses an _incendio_ charm to light some candles. Then, eyes narrowed and lips pursed, she touches wand to parchment and says, "I solemnly swear I am up to no good," in the high, brittle brogue that Harry now recognizes as her best professional register.

The Marauder's Map opens and reveals itself to her. She looks at Harry, looks at the map, looks at Harry again, opens her mouth to say something, thinks better of it and closes her mouth again.

Harry's grin threatens to swallow the bottom half of his face. "Brilliant, eh?"

She uses _lumos_ and her wand to examine the map more closely. Harry has the feeling that she's gathering much more information from it than he ever did as she prods it with her wand and murmurs softly to herself. Harry sees the usual images shift each time she touches a certain area. Apparently, the Map has levels and secrets it never revealed to him. Finally, when she is satisfied in her preliminary examination, she places the map gently in her lap and regards Harry thoughtfully.

"Where did you get this?" She asks.

"I'm not at liberty to say," He replies.

"And where did Fred and George Weasley get it?" She continues, no trace of their new egalitarian relationship now in evidence.

"Erm, I'm not sure," Harry answers honestly. He wonders that she can speak _that_ name without feeling a hammer at her heart.

"Bloody idiots," she whispers in a voice so gentle it almost makes Harry jump. She traces the magical lettering with her fingertips. Then, accusingly, she adds, "This explains a very great deal." She nods, pressing long fingers to her forehead as she speaks in a voice gone suddenly husky, "And it is going to be of incalculable assistance. Thank you."

"I was thinking that a reputation for omniscience might not hurt with the workmen. Plus, if you pay attention, you can see that the Madame Hooch dot and the Madame Pomfrey dot spend every night right on top of each other," Harry presses on in the afterglow of his success.

She removes her hand from in front of her eyes and fixes him with a glare that could shrivel the gonads of a basilisk.

Harry's hand strays toward the invisibility cloak.

Fortunately, the house elves choose that moment to arrive with refreshments. There's butterbeer and biscuits and tea, with some bits of sardines with lettuce and mustard on crackers. Clearly, even the house elves are making do.

Eschewing the lettuce and crackers, McGonagall springs to her feet and opens one of the ribbon-bound packing boxes. "I have a gift for you, too," she says. From the box, she pulls a small crystal glass and a dusty bottle of amber liquid. With a bit of wandless magic, the top comes off the bottle and she pours three fingers into the glass.

"I—um—thanks—but I—I don't really drink. Much. Lately."

She turns to face him, lowering her head and once again peering at him over the rim of her square glasses. "Boy, I wouldn't share my Macallan with you if you were William Wallace in woad," she says. Then she sits down next to him, pulls her wand and says, "Accio, lines!"

A sheaf of parchment flies from the opened crate and flutters over to the couch. Harry, curious, moves closer to her while she sips her scotch, sucks a low, whistling breath through her teeth and sips more scotch.

"This, Harry, is my private collection. It is a list of some of the more—interesting—lines I've had to assign to students in my career as a teacher." Pouring herself another generous helping of scotch, she leans back into the plush sofa and begins to read:

"Number one: I am not authorised to sell nude picture of the faculty to students. Giving them out for free is also frowned upon.

Two: I will not go to class skyclad.

Three: Writing sexy love letters to Professor Dumbledore, signed by 'Your Kitten' is not an ethical means of skipping Transfiguration class, no matter how effective it may prove.

Four: I will not ask Professor Sinistra to show me Uranus."

She stops and glares at the collected portraits until the snickering dies down.

"Five: I am not permitted to ask Professor Flitwick where Snow White is.

Six: The length of Professor Dumbledore's beard is not compensating for anything.

Seven: 'Not enough room to swing a cat in here' is a Muggle saying, not a testable hypothesis.

Eight: It is a bad idea to tell Professor McGonagall that she takes herself too seriously."

She pauses, surprised by the soft _thump_ of Harry's bottom as it slides off the sofa and hits the floor.

"Are you quite well?" She asks.

Harry can only snort an astonished, "I—I think so."

"Shall I continue, then?"

"Be my guest," he waves her on with one hand.

"Let's see—ah! Nine: Mad Eye Moody is not related to One Eyed Willy.

Ten: Under no circumstance will I greet Professor McGonagall by inquiring, 'What's new, pussycat?'

Eleven: Neither is 'What ho, Lawn Ornament!' a proper greeting for Professor Flitwick.

Twelve: I will not start every Potions class by asking if today's project is suitable for use as a sexual lubricant.

Thirteen: I will not refer to Professor McGonagall as Catwoman, no matter how good I think she might look in black leather. That one is my favorite. Do remember to breathe, Harry."

"Trying."

"Good. Fourteen: Argus Filch does not have a sister named Magenta.

Fifteen: Despite the fact that it takes place in a dungeon, I may not safeword my way out of Potions class.

Sixteen: Albus Dumbledore is not my personal Jesus."

"There has been talk of a resemblance," interrupts Dumbledore's portrait.

"Sod off, Albus. Seventeen: The average landspeed of an unladen swallow is not relevant to my Arithmancy assignment.

Eighteen: When being interrogated by a member of staff, I am not to wave my hand and announce 'These are not the droids you are looking for.'

Nineteen: I cannot attempt to recreate the Key to Time in Transfiguration class. Or transform a pepperpot into a Dalek.

Twenty: Sending rings to the nine senior faculty at Yuletide, with the salutation, 'Love, Voldemort' is not funny."

At this point, Harry decides to remain on the floor, primarily because he is laughing so hard that his whole face aches and he is unable to control his legs.

"Twenty-one: If Remus Lupin requests something of me, it is very rude to refuse by replying, 'Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin!'

Twenty-two: Severus Snape's proper given name is not Princess Silvermoon Fairywing GlimmerMcSparkles. I will not convince three of the school ghosts to visit Severus Snape on Christmas Eve. And even if Severus Snape had flying monkeys, he would not let me touch them.

Twenty three: The proper way to report to Professor McGonagall is 'You wanted to see me, Professor?' It is not, 'I have it on good authority that you have no evidence.'"

Harry wonders—as he lies on the surprisingly comfortable rug, as he grins at the painted headmasters' efforts to remain seated and dignified within their frames—whether anyone has thought to commission a portrait of Snape.

"Twenty-four: My name is not Inigo Montoya. Professor Snape did not kill my father, nor must he prepare to die."

"Scratch that!" Guffaws Dilys Derwent. Professor McGonagall ignores the comment, sips her scotch and soldiers on.

"Twenty-five: I will not trick Professor Trelawney into calling The Psychic Hotline; not even if I tape the conversation for Professor McGonagall; not even if Professor McGonagall laughs."

Spent, Harry musters a feeble croak for, "Twenty-six: I must never again substitute weapons grade plutonium for any ingredient in potions class." As she finishes, McGonagall meets his green eyes with her own blue-grey ones. Did he ever think those eyes beady? They are enormous and fierce with laughter. Ginny has eyes like that. He wonders if Ginny will grow up to be like Professor McGonagall.

A smile plays at the corners of his lips as they sit for a few moments in quiet, happy company. He hasn't felt this good in months.

No, he hasn't felt this good, this relaxed, this safe, this optimistic, in years.

Ever, really.

As he closes his eyes and listens to Minerva McGonagall move about the room in a sudden fit of unpacking, he knows for the first time in his life that - - someday - - all will be well.


	6. Kitchen Dancing

A/N: Extreme M

The Chinese—or possibly the Irish—have a curse. "May you live in interesting times," they say. Minerva has lived in interesting times. And in all that long life, she has learned the value of ordinary days. This one, for example, in which nothing more exciting happens than that the children break into her record collection. They play Frank Sinatra on the old wind-up Victrola in the parlor while she and Hermione cook the evening meal.

The children giggle at the sappy romance of bygone days. Hermione puts a lid on a simmering pot, wipes her hands on a faded yellow apron and moves into Minerva's arms, swaying.

Minerva knows this dance. She taught it to young Ronald many years ago in preparation for a ball. It is the only dance he's ever learned. It is the only dance Hermione has ever known. And so they dance perfectly together in the homely kitchen. Hermione snuggles her face into Minerva's neck, allows her hands to wander over the thin back and down over the ass, tracing a teasing pattern with her fingertips that makes Minerva's breath catch. Hermione raises her lips to Minerva's ear and quietly sings:

_There's a somebody I'm longing to see_

_I hope that she turns out to be_

_Someone who'll watch over me_

Minerva closes her eyes and contemplates a confession. Although it is the full, ripe woman that inspires Minerva's passion, sometimes her mind wanders back to the girl Hermione once was. Nineteen. Twenty. Sometimes, she remembers the first time she looked with speculation at those sweet, small breasts as they peeked out from under some soft tee shirt.

Shocked at herself, Minerva had blushed and averted her eyes.

It was in the middle of a conversation concerning Hermione's future with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, she remembers. Hermione's hand went to her throat, fluttered there for a moment, then pulled a pink cardigan tightly closed and folded her arms, as if she were cold. What assumptions had Hermione made? Blamed herself, most likely, for a too-sexy Muggle outfit.

Who would suspect Fortress McGonagall of lascivious thoughts?

Even now, as the grown woman presses their bodies more deeply together, the blood rushes to Minerva's cheeks. She allows herself to imagine the timid young thing falling beneath her wicked, experienced mouth.

Until the squeal of laughter interrupts and she jumps back from her partner to see that Rose and Hugo have caught them out. The children quickly retreat, shaking their heads at the sheer weirdness of two old ladies dancing to a song that is no longer playing as the pasta boils over on the stove.

Flora, the ancient house-elf, beats Minerva to the pot. Mostly retired, the elf now appears only when something goes wrong. To keep her hand in, Minerva assumes, and to make Minerva feel like a twelve-year-old.

"I'll get that, Flor," Minerva instructs in her most officious voice. The elf is having none of it. Hermione smirks as the stooped and shriveled elf—the stump of an animate tree—waves her mistress away.

"No, no, Missy-Miss," she croaks in the baritone of a bullfrog, "You go on about your dancing. Flora still knows what's what with a pot of noodles, no mistake."

Flora's tartan livery, knotted from crisp new dishcloths, doubles as wiping rag and oven mitt. This elf is as free as every other elf has been since Hermione negotiated the emancipation of 2013. But loyalties run deep in her people. She'll no more leave her wee lass than cut off her own hands. No, she'll more likely cut off her own hands than abandon Minerva to a scandalous independence.

Hermione shrugs, turns to Minerva, holds out a hand and says, "Shall we?"

"But," Minerva is still quite breathless, "But whatever must they think?" She says.

"They grumbles. Missy-Miss and Master Mars used to grumble. Remember? Old Mistress and Master danced themselves about on the lawns," Flora says as she wandlessly commands the water to leave the cooking pot and deposit itself in the sink.

"But if it bothers them so…" Minerva starts.

"No," Chides the house-elf. It is the distant bellow of an annoyed elephant seal. "The age of grumbling is upon them."

Hermione bites her lower lip, perhaps considering, weighing this small bit of her own happiness against her responsibilities as a mother. Her hand finds Minerva's and their fingers tightly lace.

Minerva does remember. She remembers rolling her eyes to the heavens, exasperated at the foolishness of her own parents waltzing through the heather on their way to the Beltane Fires. Minerva remembers whispering back and forth with her elder brother as they drank their cocoa and tried to stay up late enough to catch their parents' return. They never did manage it, always drifting off by the hearth well before dawn.

Funny, that. They could stay up on other nights: Christmas Eve, for example. But they'd never caught their parents returning from the mysterious—

"You spiked the cocoa!" She chirps at Flora.

"What?" Hermione jumps, startled at Minerva's outburst.

Flora chuckles.

"Nothing," Minerva says. She notices that Hermione's hand has left hers, that she's unconsciously put distance between them. Minerva makes a decision, saying, "I remember going to sleep each night knowing that my parents loved one another well. I don't remember ever having a moment's doubt," she says.

Hermione's eyes grow large. Her teeth stop worrying her lip. Minerva has surprised her with this answer.

They dance a little bit more to Flora's deeply off-key humming. Just until the sauce is ready.

* * *

An ordinary day, full of nothing but life and the living thereof. In the evening, after Rose and Hugo have gone off to their rooms, Hermione lies in Minerva's bed. They face each other and talk about their day: How old might Flora actually be? How many inches will Hugo grow by summer's end? Will the eggplant ripen in this climate and where Minerva tasted the most delicious olive oil once at a Tuscan inn. Hermione slips her leg up over Minerva's hip and they continue to talk as Minerva's fingers push into the wiry hairs at the juncture between Hermione's legs. She loves that Hermione is still fertile, still subject to cycles and tides, still capable of producing this much moisture just from a few loving kisses and caresses. She slips a long finger inside, savors the softness, the heat and the fluttering of Hermione's eyelids as she pauses their conversation, smiles her pleasure.

Still young. Not too young. Soft about the jaw and eyelids and elbows. Hard in muscle and bone. Capable of pushing back. The Great Liberator of dragons stuck in dungeons and elves stuck in kitchens and dowager damsels stuck in magic castles.

Minerva's thumb finds the soft nubbin of flesh at Hermione's center and circles it gently as she works more fingers inside. Their talk turns to more intimate topics. Hermione is afraid that she tells Minerva how much she loves her too often. She's afraid Minerva will grow tired or disdainful of Hermione's need to verbalize her affection.

"Silly old witch," Minerva calls her, "My own heart." And Hermione pushes into Minerva's hand.

Minerva understands what it is to throw your heart out like a snitch and have it beaten back like a bludger. Minerva understands why one must be very, very careful.

She cups her four fingers and slips them all inside Hermione. Even with thin, elegant hands, it is a tight fit. Hermione's hips tighten and Minerva gentles her pace. She barely thrusts, instead moving her hand and fingers to find a comfortable angle. Still, they talk.

Does Hermione see the triumph in Minerva's eyes as she listens? Does she know how Minerva has longed for these words?

Hermione whispers tentatively about how much she loves what Minerva is doing. She loves feeling full. She loves it when Minerva reaches so deeply inside of her and crooks her fingers—just so. Minerva draws out Hermione's words with her eyes, with soft kisses and a firm hand pressed between Hermione's shoulder blades. That hand provides something for Hermione to push against when words finally fail.

Minerva hears Hermione's breath go ragged, sees her mouth go slack, smells the rich scent of woman and arousal. She senses the tensing of the calf hooked around her own hips. She murmurs in Hermione's ear when she knows they are close. And when the muscles of Hermione's vagina clamp down painfully on her fingers and the moan pushes out from between Hermione's lips, Minerva bends to catch the sound in her own mouth, swallowing it whole.

It takes a long time for Hermione's shuddering to subside. When it does, Hermione is sleepy and sweet. She shyly licks her own juices off of Minerva's fingers as her shoulders relax into the feather pillow beneath her. This is enough for Minerva. It is the perfect ending to her perfect, ordinary day. But Hermione, sated and nearly asleep, tangles her fingers into Minerva's long, dark hair. She guides Minerva's lips to her breasts, those sweet, small, girlish, pink breasts. A nipple teases Minerva's lips and she opens her mouth reflexively, fastens her lips around one, then the other. Hermione slips arms around her head, firmly holding them both in a sustainable position as Minerva pulls greedily, her mind gone blank, abandoned to the primal sensations of being stroked, loved, and held at the breast. Hermione purrs even as she slips into sleep. Still suckling, Minerva lets the tears form and fall.


	7. Armour

A/N This chapter includes a brief depiction of underage sexuality.

* * *

_Two girls. One, perhaps twelve but tall and prematurely elegant, has long black hair, ivory skin and pale blue eyes. The other, shorter, younger, has a short-cropped halo of silver. Her eyes are amber and avid. The girls stand close together in a tunnel lit by one floating candle. The shuffling sounds of ordinary life surround them, but they are sunk into shadows and safe from the outside world._

"_May I see?" Asks the short one. "Show me again. Please?"_

_The tall one bites a lip and worries the wound with her tongue. She's torn. She can't imagine what might be wrong with what they're about to do, and yet it can't be right, either. Still, the pleading look on her companion's face compels her. She opens her robes down the front, exposes her white cotton knickers and knee-high stockings. With one hand, she pushes the front of her panties down around her thighs. The small patch of wiry black curls glistens in the candlelight. The silver-haired girl stares, transfixed._

_There is silence between them._

_Suddenly, the tall girl snaps her panties up, closes her robes and leans against the rough stone side of the tunnel, breathing in panic-laced gulps._

"_Mine doesn't look like that," says her companion._

"_You don't have any," the tall girl asserts. Her voice is imperious, filled with the assurance of her full twelve years._

"_I do," she answers, squaring her shoulders as if for a fight. "It grew—over the summer."_

_Pale blue eyes go wide and sparkling. "Let's see, then," she says._

_The smaller girl quickly shrugs off her robes and shinnies out of her underclothes. There, between her legs, are soft, silken strands of purest silver. They seem almost made of moonlight. The tall girl leans in for a good look, silently calling the candle to her._

"_Oh, Mara," she says. "It looks so soft."_

"_Yeah?" The shorter girl pushes her hips out, throws her shoulders back, preens a bit. "You can touch it if you want."_

"_Truly?" The tall girl can't contain her delight, or her curiosity. A slender, white hand reaches out…_

"Minerva!" Hermione's head pops out of the pensieve. Her eyebrows knit across the bridge of her nose as she stands flat-footed, hands on hips.

Minerva sits primly in her favorite chair by the fire, book in hand. "What?" She asks. Her private study is small, cosy, and lined with books. The portable pewter pensieve that Hermione faces was a seventeenth birthday gift from Minerva's father.

"What is this?" Hermione demands.

Minerva puts her book down on the table, maybe harder than necessary. She matches Hermione's tone. "You asked," she says, and crosses her arms.

"You were children!"

"You're overreacting."

"Oh, and you didn't overreact when I told you about …"

"That was different," Minerva snaps. She stands, pulls herself to full height and paces the length of her study. "You were an impressionable girl; a child in my care. And he was that—that—overgrown, hairy, arrogant beast of a Quidditch player!"

"He was very sweet," Hermione interrupts Minerva's rant before it can build up a true head of steam, "And you didn't have to do _that_."

Minerva collects herself. "It was easily repaired. And nobody uses the astronomy tower in mid-winter anyway." She sits again, abruptly.

Hermione wears her hair tied back in a tartan ribbon. She pushes the escaped strands behind one ear and shifts her weight from foot to foot. "You were just babies," she says, "I'm not sure I want to see the rest."

Minerva's eyes narrow and her lips form a thin, incredulous line. "What do you think I am? A purveyor of child pornography? Stay out of the dressing room and you'll be fine."

"Dressing room. Right," Hermione mumbles. Bracing herself, she takes a deep breath and plunges her face back into the icy, silvery semi-liquid that fills the pewter bowl.

_She stands outside the dressing rooms near the Quidditch pitch. The door is ajar. Afternoon light filters through the doorway and shows the barest outlines of two bodies, long legs and arms entangled. Distinctive sounds make clear what the low light leaves to the imagination._

_All at once, Hermione is enveloped in royal blue. When her vision clears, she finds herself looking at the back of an auburn-haired Albus Dumbledore. He stands in the open doorway and waits. The noises cease and are replaced by the sounds of scrambling._

_"Ladies," he intones, "If you will meet me in my office in ten minutes? Thank you." He turns to leave, blind to his observer, his gently frowning face showing nothing but concern._

_A bright swirl of color coalesces into an office. Hermione recognizes Albus Dumbledore's usual assortment of gadgets and paraphernalia. But the office is the one traditionally occupied by the head of Gryffindor House. It is smallish, round like the tower it sits in, with a long, narrow window. Fawkes sits on a perch next to the window and sings softly to himself._

_Dumbledore sits behind a handsome desk. In two carved wooden chairs sit two teenaged girls. Mara Hooch is blazing, straight-backed, defiant. Hermione guesses that she's about fourteen. Minerva is one year older, a highland beauty, painfully thin, slumped and staring at the hands folded in her lap. Hermione wants to throw her arms around the girl, tell her not to worry, feed her a decent meal._

_Same height. Same shape. Same basic hairstyle. Still, it is difficult for Hermione to feel the connection between the girl in the pensieve and the woman waiting in a study somewhere nearby. _

_"So," Dumbledore asks, "How long have you two been in love?"_

_Minerva looks up sharply, surprise clear in her face. Mara's shoulders relax as she takes Minerva's hand in her own. "More than three years, sir," she answers him._

_Fawkes whistles appreciatively, then returns to his song._

_"Ah, found each other young, then? That can be a blessing. Or a curse. Ask Shakespeare. Dear me." He shakes his great auburn head and Hermione has an impression of an old lion shooing flies, "If I tell you that you are too young to be in love, you will know that I am lying."_

_Xiomara Hooch acknowledges the truth of his assertion with a brisk nod. Dumbledore looks her in the eye as if searching for something, then sits back in his chair as if a great question has been settled. Just two chaps, they are, having a bollocks-free exchange of ideas._

"_But if I tell you that you are too young to practice the art of love with the appropriate…" His hands gesture as if he might snatch the word he seeks from midair, "…chivalry. Yes. That's the thing. If I tell you that, will you at least try to trust me?"_

_"Chivalry?" Mara asks._

_"Knights. Armour." Minerva mumbles._

_"More than that, Miss McGonagall, much more than that. To be chivalrous is to be honourable. To be honourable is to know the difference between love and greed."_

_Mara glances at Minerva and squeezes her hand more tightly. Minerva looks at Dumbledore through lowered lashes, her cheeks bright with shame._

_"Greed says, 'I want you now, and damn the consequences!' Love says, 'I want you well, and damn the inconvenience!' Do you see the difference?" He looks from girl to girl._

_Now it is Minerva who sits up straighter, holds her chin a little higher. _

"_Where would you be at this moment," Dumbledore whispers, "If someone else had found you?"_

_Mara studies her scuffed shoes, obviously lost in thought._

_"It's so hard," She finally admits._

_"It is. Indeed," Albus Dumbledore nods in agreement. Hermione's heart melts a little. There is no condescension in his voice. He might as well be discussing matters of state with the Wizengamot. "But not impossible. The whole world is built on the creativity of lovers."_

_Mara takes a handful of lemon drops from an enameled bowl. She puts them one by one into her mouth and sucks contemplatively. Albus Dumbledore lays flat palms on his desk and says, "Now, if you'll excuse us, Miss Hooch, I'd like to talk to Miss McGonagall about the matter that sent me looking for her in the first place."_

_Mara shakes her head. "I'll stay," she says._

_Dumbledore looks over his glasses at Minerva. "It's about Mars," he tells her. His voice grows distant, hollow._

_The scene begins to fade, to pull away. Hermione doesn't hear what Minerva tells Mara. The edges start to blur as Mara gets up and walks out of the office. Hermione feels that she is spiraling upward_.

Suddenly, she is there, in Minerva's study, shaking her head free of imaginary water droplets and trying to focus on the concrete reality of her surroundings. She smells the good wood smoke of the fire. She hears the rustle of Minerva turning a page. The muscles in her neck are aching and cramped.

Hermione approaches Minerva and puts a hand on her thin shoulder. Minerva finishes a paragraph, marks the page with a bit of ribbon, and lays the book aside. She looks up at Hermione and waits.

"He didn't expel you?" Hermione asks, not really asking, in wonder and affection.

"Expel? No, quite the opposite; he bound me to him rather permanently."

Hermione's grip on Minerva's shoulder tightens. Minerva gently pries the fingers loose, kisses the open palm, quietly moves to reclaim her oldest memories from the pewter bowl.

Jealousy is irrational. Hermione knows.

Fear of the truth is unconscionable. Hermione knows.

Someday, Hermione knows, she will ask.


	8. Howler

"What is it?" Hermione asks. She sits next to Minerva on the garden bench.

Minerva holds the day's post on her lap as she reads a letter stamped with the Minister of Magic's personal seal.

"I am offered a stipend and title should I choose to accompany you to your new posting during the summer holidays," Minerva says.

"Hmm," Hermione says.

The letter dangles from Minerva's long fingers as she rests her elbow on the wooden arm of the settee. The wind threatens to snatch it, but Minerva's grip is too sure.

"I haven't accepted a new posting," Hermione says.

"But there has been an offer?"

"There has," Hermione answers.

It does not escape Minerva's attention that her cool regard, casual pose, and clipped tones are entirely failing to perturb Hermione Granger-Weasley.

"Offers are good, right?" Hermione asks. Not perturbed, then, but clearly aware. Minerva relaxes and reminds herself that it is probably safe to trust the woman she loves with her own career decisions.

"Yes. And very welcome, considering what I must open next." Minerva reaches into the pile of newspapers and advertisements (Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes is having their annual Summer Silly Sale) and pulls out a distinctive red envelope.

"Oh, no," Hermione says, turning pale in the noonday sun.

"From Molly, I'm afraid."

They silently contemplate the thing for several moments.

It does not go away of its own volition.

Steeling herself, Minerva says, "Best get it over with quickly." She rips the seal.

"MINERVA MILLICENT MORGAN MCGONAGALL! YOU WILL STOP SLINKING AROUND AND GET YOURSELF TO THE BURROW FOR OUR ANNUAL FAMILY PICNIC OR I WILL TRACK YOU DOWN AND WHIP YOUR SKINNY OLD ARSE WITH MY OWN WAND!" Red origami lips scream in the unnaturally magnified voice of Molly Weasley.

"Oh, dear," says Minerva, when it has finished tearing itself to bits. "It doesn't look as if she's going to let us decline that invitation." She absently runs the palm of her hand over the place on her chest where four stunners have left a livid pink scar. "You know what this means, don't you?"

"Yes. Apparently, Molly does not realize how much you enjoy that sort of thing," Hermione answers.

Minerva's blush reaches from her hairline to the collar of her white summer blouse, creeps down the open neck, and insinuates itself into the valley between her breasts. She only sputters a little bit when she whispers, "Ronald will be there, then?"

Hermione sighs, frowns, lowers her eyes to the ground. "Yes," she answers, "He'll have to be."

"It has been a long time, my dear. You'd be amazed what time can heal. And I will be there every moment," Minerva promises.


	9. The Box

A/N: Because I was asked, I should like to say that Hermione, in this story, is about forty years old.

* * *

Minerva sits, astonished, looking at the sinister black box. It glows. It hums. It parades a relentless succession of lurid images, appalling ideas, and unnatural noises before her.

And the children sit as transfixed as if they were under the Imperius Curse. She sits with them in the parlor, hating every moment spent in the presence of the infernal beast, but unwilling to leave Rose and Hugo alone with it.

The only thing that keeps her from hexing it outright is the distraction of the quill in her hand. It is warm. It makes a soothing hum. And it is connected directly to a similar one held by Hermione. Minerva contemplates the sensual qualities of the feather in her hand. Carrier Pigeon. Placed just so, along the hollow of Hermione's rather ticklish throat…

_Minerva?_

Hermione's writing appears on the parchment in her lap. She snaps back to attention and uses her own quill to write, "I am here. How was your crossing?"

_You didn't tell me the Wizard's car travels on the _outside_ of the Chunnel! _

"Didn't I? It would certainly be a long, boring journey if it traveled on the inside," Minerva answers. She brushes the feather across her lips, then writes, "Where are you?"

_I'm in a small library at the Wizengamot's international offices in the Chateau de Chenonceau. The room cantilevers over the river Cher. The walls are covered in green Chinese silk and when the sun bounces off the rippling water, a slow, liquid light flows over me._

"Yes, I know the very spot. Watch out for the fellow on the tiger skin in the great tapestry of the second floor hall. He pinches."

_Not me, he doesn't. The Three Graces in my bedroom told him about you and me. What did you do to him, Minerva? And when?_

"Whatever do you mean?"

_He's afraid of you._

"Tapestries have long memories. How goes the work? Is much accomplished? Or are the Germans being stubborn?"

_Germans, shmermans. I'm the one holding up the works. I'm as a distracted as a fourth year on Valentine's Day._

"Shmermans?"

_You heard me. I suspect there are enchantments on these walls even Albus Dumbledore never heard of._

"Shmermans?

_Will you pay attention? I'm trying to tell you about something strange._

"I'm sorry. What was strange, dear?"

_Well, I had a very odd dream last night._

"Yes?"

_It was…intimate._

Minerva waits for a longish time before deciding that Hermione must be waiting for a reply.

"And?" She asks.

_We were alone in the chapel here._

"You found this disturbing, did you?"

_No. Yes. It's only that we were behaving in ways that probably aren't appropriate for a chapel._

"What ways would those be?"

_You know._

"No, truly, I do not. Were we causing harm to others? Were we causing harm to ourselves? Were we redecorating it in avocado green and burnt orange?"

_Honestly, woman. You don't want me to write these things out loud._

"I don't?"

_It isn't the sort of thing one…_

"My dear, you have come in my mouth. What is it you feel you cannot say to me?"

Minerva waits in the white noise of the blaring box. She imagines Hermione chewing her lip in that small green room, a room whose very walls are lined with the oldest, purest forms of magic. Minutes pass. Minerva shivers. How long has Hermione been within the walls of Diane de Poitiers' singular chateau? Before the infernal machine, after the howler—two weeks. Only two weeks, and Minerva is already growing short-tempered. She frowns at the unanswered question before her.

_Good point, actually._

Minerva lets out a ragged breath. "Tell me."

_All right, then. I'm in the Chapel, standing before the altar. It is full daylight and the walls glow. The sun streams across me. It is a physical thing, this sunlight. It has texture. I can feel its warmth entering and spreading through me. My breasts. My belly. Between my legs._

"And I am there with you?"

_You are behind me. I can't see you, but I am aware of you. Your hands stroke my hair. I hear your voice whispering in my ear. The words aren't clear, but my heart hears them. Your hands unbutton my robes, my shirt, my skirt. You undress me completely, stopping to caress my skin along the way._

"Yes."

_Sometimes, I think I hear music. But it isn't music. I just have that feeling of the world vibrating; resonance, like when the voices of the merpeople stir the waters of the lake._

_You spread my arms out to my sides. Your hands move up the insides of my thighs and move them apart, making room._

"For myself?"

_Then suddenly, I am leaning forward on the altar, bent at the waist, and you are taking me from behind. I feel you inside me, Minerva. I don't know what part of you it is, but I know that it is you. You fill me. You move all the way through me. I'm laughing and crying at the same time because I am someplace-_

"Where? Where are you, my darling?"

_-I don't honestly know. It isn't a feeling I have words for. Home, I suppose. The feelings were so intense, they woke me up. I was coming and crying out your name. The Three Graces heard me and asked afterward if I had dreamed of their old friend Minerva McGonagall. I asked how they knew you, but they wouldn't tell me. Although, they do seem to think they owe you their lives. They did warn the tiger-skin fellow on the tapestry, though._

_Oh, My Love. Why didn't you tell me this place was so beautiful? Why didn't you tell me all of France was so beautiful?_

"My memories of France are not so-" Minerva trails off. Several seconds pass.

_Minerva?_

Yes?

_Panicking!_

"What in the name of Morgan Le Fay's lopsided left tit is a Chicken MacNugget?"

_Excuse me?_

"For that matter, what are ordinary chicken nuggets and why should they need a clan chieftain?"

_Minerva, what are you doing?_

"And what purpose is served by dipping them in viscous goo?"

_Minerva McGonagall! What have you done?_

"Great Merlin's Scrote! They're being eaten. Muggles are actually eating them. Or maybe not. This has to be one of those—what was the word—_special effects_ you've told me about. Nobody would truly eat such a thing. Please tell me no one would genuinely eat one of those nasty, awful bits."

_Woman, you did _not_ give in and buy the children a television set. I clearly remember saying no…_

"Hermione…"

…_on more than one occasion. On every occasion, come to think of it. How could you sneak off behind my back and…_

"Hermione!"

…_what?_

"What I did was graciously accept a gift from the children's father. I hardly see how I could have done otherwise without causing ill feeling on all sides."

_Oh._

"Hermione?"

_Yes?_

"Hugo wants to know if we can have Chicken MacNuggets for dinner."

_Tell him that his mother is beating her head against green Chinese silk._

"He said, 'That's lovely,' and went back to watching the loud box." Minerva brushes the feather softly across her lips. The long-buried memory of that beautiful chapel is born again in her imagination. The light. The echoes. It brings with it other memories. She sees herself a child no older than Rose, dirty, sobbing at the altar that now haunts Hermione's erotic dreams.

_Minerva?_

_Love?_

_Right. I'm not panicking. Minerva, I assure you that there is nothing to be done about the whole McNugget phenomenon, evil as it may be. The Muggles don't want to be saved, you see. The French have actually been on the forefront of this battle for years, and-_

"There is a small hotel on the Left Bank, near the old church of Saint Germaine des Pres. Engage two rooms."

_What?_

"You're right. Engage three rooms. The children are much too old to share. And borrow an owl to notify the Jones family at that address I gave you in Nice."

_Notify them of what?_

"Our presence, of course. Loquacious will want to meet them."

_Meet whom?_

"The children! Really, Hermione, don't be obtuse. You'll need to prepare for our arrival by dinner."

_Arrival? Here?_

"For dinner. Yes. And several more days, I should think. At least until the day of the Weasley picnic. Indeed. Silly of me, really. I should have thought of it before."

_What?_

"Our children," Minerva furiously scribbles, "Shall have France."


	10. French Postcards I

It isn't the lightless eyes or sunken hollows of cheekbone that shock and disorient Hermione. It's the full minute that does it; the full minute it takes for her to realize that the face staring out from the small booklet in her hands is the face of someone she's known for decades, of her own lover, of the witch Minerva McGonagall.

The portrait blinks at her. It is animated, as all wizard photos are, but blank. Not even challenging, angry, sad, or haunted. Blank.

She shivers. Who is that young woman? Who is she beyond, it turns out, the first person ever to hold Hermione's current job?

And why has Minerva never mentioned that she was Britain's first representative to the International Wizengamot?

* * *

Summer in this part of France is less fecund than in England, less desperate than in Scotland. Hermione supposes that in France, summer has less to prove. Hermione sits in a white iron chair under a copse of trees near a clearing. On the clearing is a platform. On the platform, her family will soon appear. Her lover Minerva McGonagall, her nearly grown daughter Rose and her gangly, adolescent son Hugo are due to arrive any moment. She has passed the time reading some of the mountain of information she's been given as part of her new position.

The borders of wizarding Britain are warded with guts and guile, and Hermione is the new guard.

There is so much information from Draco Malfoy, the representative for the last twenty years, that Hermione has only just turned to the pages contributed by those who came before. A Bones. A Gadabowt. And Minerva Morgan McGonagall, who left one neatly written sheet of parchment detailing the times, dates and subjects of various meetings and absolutely nothing in the section meant to convey advice to future representatives. In all, this single sheet of paper represents three years' work.

_Crack!_

Three people appear before her. Two are pale, greenish and wobbly. The third stands between them, holding each firmly by an arm. She is a tall witch with dark hair pulled back into a severe bun, a stern expression on her face, and a pair of squarish glasses perched on her nose. She is speaking gently to each of the children, calming them, explaining things, utterly unable to resist a teachable moment even when school is out and she is only a parent helping her children to adjust to long-distance side-along apparition.

Hermione forgets the mystery for a moment and smiles at the woman she loves. Nearing her hundredth year, she could easily pass in Muggle society for fifty.

Hermione looks more closely.

Forty, even.

Why is Minerva wearing a glamour? Hermione puts the stack of parchment aside on a nearby table, charms it to protect its more sensitive secrets, and moves toward her family. There isn't a thing in the scene before her that would alarm anyone except Hermione, who knows that Minerva McGonagall puts on a glamour the same way some women put on makeup: defensively. In fact, Minerva does it almost subconsciously. When she feels threatened or nervous, it isn't possible to guess her age at all.

Hermione comes out of the shadows. Minerva smiles broadly for just a second and the bright sun suddenly flares. She is beautiful, breathtaking. Hermione feels the power flowing thick and fast from her as she closes the distance between them.

As Minerva releases the children just a little too abruptly, propels herself into Hermione's arms with just a little too much force and familiarity, Hermione comes to another disorienting realization.

The Lion of Gryffindor is terrified.

* * *

"How many are there? Are they matched? Mares or stallions? About how many hands?"

Hugo has inherited his Uncle Charlie's affinity for magical creatures. At school, he spends more time wrangling odd creatures with Hagrid than he does on his studies. His great, lanky body fairly trembles with excitement as he badgers Minerva with questions about the thestrals that will pull their carriage to the nearest portkey.

Minerva takes his hand in hers and guides it to the thestral's bony haunches. Slowly, carefully, Hugo feels his way across the huge animal. He's handled many. But he's never seen one, for which his mother sends out a silent prayer of thanks as she watches her son scratch the thestral under the ridges of its neck.

"Why don't we just take the train?" Rose asks as she loads her last bit of luggage and climbs into the carriage.

Minerva stiffens. Hugo lets out a great snort of laughter, incredulous. "What? And miss this?" He asks, beaming at the invisible animals. He gives the one nearest him a last pat and lopes loose-limbed toward the carriage, pausing on his way only briefly to drop a kiss upon Minerva's cheek.

Hermione looks quickly away and stifles a smile of pure happiness. When she looks back, she sees Minerva doing much the same thing, face bright pink with delight. Still, she manages some dignity as she climbs into the carriage, takes the reins, and drives the winged team on its way to the portkey. Hermione rides shotgun. She has much to tell Minerva. She has far more questions to ask. And she's certain that she ought to ask them in private.

Why, for example, does Minerva never take trains? Hermione knows that Minerva is responsible for all the charms and spells and wards placed upon the Hogwarts Express, and that she has been for as long as anyone can remember. But she's never ridden it.

"Why didn't you tell us you used to do Mum's job?"

Hermione looks about her with a start. Hugo has her stack of parchment in his hands and has come to the salient page more swiftly than his mother did. Not surprising, really. It isn't like he's going to read anything other than the captions of pictures. He's climbed up front and stuck his great spotted face between Hermione and Minerva.

"It was hardly the same job, then," Minerva answers. In spite of the practiced, relaxed way she holds the reins, her shoulders are squared and stiff.

"You were so young!" He observes. His sister takes the pamphlet from his hand to examine the photo for herself.

"Aye," says Minerva.

Hermione says nothing. She doesn't want to create an awkward situation by stifling the children's curiosity. Besides, their curiosity is hers as well.

"How did you get the job?" Hugo asks.

"It fell to me primarily because I was the only member of the Resistance willing to remain in France after the war," Minerva replies.

"You didn't want to go home?" Hugo asks.

They pass through farmland at the edge of a forested valley. Minerva must pay attention to the driving as the carriage bumps over a ditch in the dirt path.

"I know," Rose says from the back of the carriage. "You had a lover, didn't you?"

Minerva pulls back the reins to slow the thestrals in preparation for an upcoming twist in the road.

"Something like that," she answers.

* * *

Corporal Loquacious J. Jones came from the ninth ward of New Orleans, where the whole world smelled of brackish water and green grew on anything that wasn't regularly scrubbed. As far as Loqi could tell, all of France was brown, cold, and smelled of blood and burning oil. The Germans had dug a trench outside of Bourgaltroff, and most of the 761st tank battalion had crashed headfirst into it. Now the Nazis' big guns were picking off the lame Panthers one by one. Loqi's partner had split his head open in the crash. The only light came from the flash of artillery that shined through the open hatch.

He wasn't in great shape himself. His left leg was banged up and his shoulder hurt. He had no way of judging his own wounds. The only avenue left to him on this early winter's night was retreat.

Bullets whizzed all around his tank. But the big guns were coming closer and closer, taking their time, methodical as the Germans always were.

What would his mama say when they sent her the telegram? What would that old sonofabitch Patton say when they told him that the only Negro tank jockeys in the history of war had all got themselves stuck in a ditch and killed?

Instinctively, Loqi reached for his wand.

He wasn't wizard enough to fight Grindelwald's forces toe-to-toe with Antoine Shacklebolt and his Crescent City Chiefs, but he might just be able to get himself and a few others out of this mess.

It was on his sixth pass through the hot zone with a buddy over one shoulder and his wand over the other when his leg finally gave out and crumpled beneath him. He landed with a thud in the mud, crawled out from under the unconscious and bleeding soldier he'd been carrying, and pulled himself hand over hand toward a nearby copse of trees. He knew that Sgt. Rivers was pushing ahead, taking fire and laying down cover while the rest of the men retreated. Maybe, he thought, he could find someplace to hide himself until…

…_crack. Splash. Fwump. Hiss._

He lay flat on his back in a disguised trench. A foxhole, really. His helmet had fallen off in the tumble. He breathed deeply, mentally checking each part of his body for injury. When he'd just about decided that he was going to survive (for the next few minutes, anyway) he heard movement in the trench with him.

His wand was out, his eyes searching frantically in the dark for the source of the sound. His instinct was to scramble to his knees, but training told him to stay low and make a narrow target.

A gray shadow moved to his left. Small. Quick. Rat? Something worse?

He saw two eyes glow yellow in the night. He blinked, and a small gray tabby cat came into view. It crouched in the corner, back up, tail twitching, claws extended, hissing at him.

He smiled.

With his wand, he cast an easy soundproofing charm. Then he cast a ward or two that wouldn't draw the attention of the sorcerer that was rumored to be traveling with each German company. Then, with the last bit of strength he had in him, he cast a warming spell around him.

"Hey now, Kitty. Everything's gonna be all right, you'll see. Just leave everything to old Loqi." He settled with his back to the side of the trench and stretched his legs out before him. His feet reached the other side. The cat still cowered at the other end of the foxhole, but it was no longer poised for attack. It watched him warily as he wiggled his fingers and went on talking, "No bad kraut's gonna eat a little French kitty for his supper while Loqi's around, you can bet on that. We're gonna be just fine. You and me, we're gonna be okay." He was babbling from exhaustion and terror. He knew it.

The cat sniffed the air.

Slowly, slowly the animal stood, stretched, inched toward him in that muddy hole in the ground. Soon enough, the cat was within reach. Loquacious gently reached out, picked it up and drew it to him. The cat was warm and soft. In spite of the warming charm, he was cold and trembling. His whole body hurt. He tasted blood in his mouth. The stink of soot and ordnance and burning bodies stung his lungs as he concentrated completely on stroking the cat in his lap.

"Good girl," he cooed. "Such a good girl." He wondered how it was that he'd decided the cat was female. She just looked feminine to him. Probably wishful thinking. "I think I just wished you feminine, feline. Hey, as long as I'm wishin', I might as well go all the way and wish you human, too. Wouldn't that be something fine? Wish you were a beautiful woman down here in this stinking mud with me."

And then the most amazing thing happened.

* * *

The hotel is perfect, and located solidly in Muggle Paris. In fact, Minerva has outlined a plan for the weekend that neatly avoids wizarding France.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Those are all the thoughts Hermione has time to think before Minerva pounces on her.

* * *

The cat in Loqi's lap gained weight, size, shifted in ways too complex for him to see in the dark. He didn't bother reaching for his wand. He was pinned, tired and trapped.

Which is why he just naturally breathed a prayer of thanksgiving when his mind finally comprehended that the part of the cat now occupying his hand was in fact a soft, full woman's breast. The girl turned in his lap so he could see her in profile. Long black hair escaped a braid. Pale skin framed enormous light-colored eyes. She was covered in smudges and soot and regarded him with the same fierce concentration as she had as a cat.

Her dark sweater was torn, her trousers tight. Her slender arms made a circle around his neck. He was on top of her before he could make even the smallest sense of what was happening. She whispered words he didn't catch and her clothes transformed themselves into thick blankets. Her tongue was in his mouth. Her hips pressed insistently into him.

_She must be powerful_, he thought. _Seems friendly enough, though. _

Her hands unbuttoned his fatigues and pushed them down around his knees. He rested on his hip and watched as the woman—beautiful, young woman—slid down on the blankets and took him into her mouth.

_Sweet Mother of God_, he thought as that powerful, tender, and hot mouth tried to swallow him whole.

* * *

As Minerva moves upon Hermione, pins her, pushes her tongue into her mouth, and writhes against her on the soft mattress, Hermione's first instinct is to pull away.

She doesn't. She knows how that feels. She knows it in the pit of her stomach.

Minerva's kisses are all tooth and hunger. Her hands scrabble frantically at Hermione's skin, pinch and pull and grip hard enough to leave small bruises. Unable to process the sensual assault, Hermione grips Minerva's slender wrists in her hands. She uses brute strength to push them away from her, to push them onto the bed and hold them there at Minerva's sides.

Minerva growls. The sound shocks Hermione, but the look in her lover's eyes tells her that it isn't an angry sound.

No, Minerva is naked before her, pushing herself up, bucking her hips lasciviously and whimpering for physical contact.

Hermione is wet and mesmerized. Even so, the part of her mind still capable of analytical thought notes how unusual this is. Her Minerva is well past the age of sexual urgency. Her Minerva specializes in long, loving foreplay that can start first thing in the morning and last all day.

Maybe it's true what they say about Paris.

* * *

"Je suis profondément soupçonneux de ce fromage," Minerva tells the man in the shop, which leads to a conversation that Hermione's translation spell renders as:

Cheese Merchant: Go to fart in water and make bubbles!

Minerva: You go away and see if I am there!

Cheese Merchant: I don't give a damn!

Minerva: I could care less also!

Cheese Merchant: Reality and you don't get on, do they?

Minerva: Was it difficult to find a tie more obnoxious than you?

Cheese Merchant: Deal with your onions!

Minerva: Try this maneuver: Walk backwards fifty or sixty paces, take several deep breaths, sprint forward at full speed, do a triple somerset in the air and disappear up your own arse!

The cheese turns out to be quite good, if a little bland, and is purchased at a respectable discount. Hermione and Minerva decide to let the children handle the translation spells for the remainder of the weekend.

* * *

Loqi Jones wasn't in any fit state to notice when the 761st pulled out. He didn't notice when the Germans finished sweeping the area and pushed forward. He did notice that when the girl cried out in ecstasy, she did it in precise, profane English. He noticed that she liked to be taken from behind, and hard. He noticed that her long legs wrapped around him with a strength uncanny in one so thin and pale. He noticed that she was powerful enough as a witch and an animagus to leave him any time, but chose not to. He noticed that she'd happily watch him make water in his helmet, but that when he prayed, she averted her eyes.

Minerva's French is flawless. Hermione's is passable. The children, giddily overwhelmed by the sights, smells, sounds, and flavors of Paris, go around saying things like, "Waste-gas main of Nice. What do you feed him?"

And, "Only leave it or I will seize your reproductive lines!"

And, "Where could I find from small the witch hall?"

On Sunday afternoon, Hermione takes Minerva's arm and steers her toward the river, where artists pose for the tourists and paint their lunch before eating it. One artist, with perhaps more imagination than his fellows, shows a canvas of the most luscious-looking pears poached in wine and covered in chocolate sauce. Three pears. And Crème Chantilly. Hermione looks at that canvas for a long, long time.

When Minerva buys it for her, she gets the recipe thrown in for free. Hermione is impressed. She's always suspected that her favorite cat would have excellent hunting instincts. This weekend, in Minerva's luminous blue eyes, every unwary Parisian is a fat, juicy mouse.

* * *

Loqi Jones counted three full days before he woke up alone. Exhausted. Wounded. Lost. Negro. In Nazi-occupied France. So when the demon-horses poked their noses over the side of his hole, he was prepared to give his soul up to the Devil and explain that it had been worth it.

He was rehearsing his speech when the girl appeared with a wand, levitated him up onto the back of the bony, winged beast, mounted her own, and led him on the single most uncomfortable ride of his life.

And he'd driven a tank.

* * *

Monday morning early, before Minerva McGonagall (or, indeed, most of France) is awake, Hermione Granger-Weasley wraps a small canvas in towels to protect it from soot. She steps into her hotel room's recently enchanted fireplace, sprinkles a little floo powder, and says, "Chateau de Chenonceau."

* * *

The river Cher divided free France from Nazi-occupied, Vichy France. The Chateau de Chenonceau—that great, neglected palace—straddled the river Cher. The Vichy side had been deforested to prevent the free passage of Resistance fighters from one side to the other.

Two soldiers of the Third Reich watched in superior amusement as the piteously soaked tabby rode a raft of felled logs and flotsam down the middle of the river.

"Must have followed a mouse," said the first.

"Stupid French cats," replied the second.

* * *

"We cannot," says the first Grace. She shakes her head vigorously to emphasize her commitment.

"Oui. We must not," adds the second Grace. She turns from her dance to face Hermione, who marvels at the fortunate combination of wind and posture that keeps a single strip of filmy cloth perfectly positioned to hide the ethereal girl's more earthy aspects. What the cloth doesn't hide, however, is the generously fleshy hips and thighs of all three Graces.

"Absolument!" Says the third, "Minerva was a great fighter for the cause. A heroine! We would never betray her."

Hermione uncovers the canvas she has carefully protected. On it are three luscious pears, poached in wine, covered in chocolate sauce and swimming in Chantilly cream.

"Which is why it is so fortunate that there is another way!" Asserts the first Grace, her hungry gaze never leaving the treasure Hermione has revealed.

"Mais oui," adds the second Grace. "For you are such an adamant lover..." She nods and licks her delicately painted lips.

"...that you will surely discover the memories she left in the reliquary under the sacred altar." The third Grace's pert bosom heaves in anticipation of the exquisite morsels before her.

"Dancing is hard work," mumbles the first Grace.

"I'll just leave this here, then," Hermione says. She places the canvas atop a nearby table, leans it against the wall and quietly retreats.

As the three sisters reach beyond their own frame, three lovely hands appear upon the small canvas. Three sticky pears are eagerly scooped from a painted china bowl.

"That little one, she will make a fine diplomat, I think," observes the second Grace.

* * *

The girl transformed as soon as the makeshift raft disappeared under the Chateau's arched stone foundations. She stretched her long, lean muscles and caught a heavy oaken girder, swung around and wedged the leading edge of the flotilla into a corner, neatly stopping the raft's progress. Loqi burrowed out from under his camouflage and scrambled up into the crossed wooden supports on the Chateau's underside like he was climbing a tree back home. She worked her way toward him on the jungle gym, paused, smiled in a way that showed her canine teeth, kissed him lightly on the lips, and led him to a platform wedged beneath a small trapdoor.

She opened it cautiously. Loqi drew his wand and hoped for the best. When she disappeared into the room above, he followed her.

* * *

Hermione finds herself in a small white chapel. The ceiling is high and delicately vaulted. The stone walls are whitewashed a brilliant white. Long, white, tapered candles flank the room in banks, casting a sparkling light upon polished wood floors and pews. In a frame on one wall, a blue-cloaked Madonna hums sweetly to herself, intent on some task Hermione cannot see. What she can see, and she can feel, is the brilliant morning light shining through a high bank of windows like pastel jewels, covering all with dancing pools of color.

The power in this room is overwhelming. For a moment, Hermione does nothing but throw her arms wide and allow herself to feel it envelop every inch of her body.

* * *

They found themselves in a small white chapel. The ceiling was high, vaulted. The whitewashed stone walls were peeling and damp. The wooden pews were jumbled against the wall and a pure, brilliant light shone through the shards of a high bank of pastel stained glass. To Loqi's astonishment, the girl fell to her knees before the carved stone altar.

Her long dark hair formed a curtain over her face. Her slight shoulders heaved from some great effort. The thickly callused soles of her dirty bare feet pointed elegantly back to him. He wanted to go to her, to offer some comfort, to take responsibility for all that had happened between them, to release her from this penitent pose.

Then he noticed the soft swirls of shining liquid—or vapor—that seeped from her eyes and ears as she silently wept. He noticed the substance falling into a small silver bowl that she had drawn from a niche at the altar's base.

The lightest possible footfall behind him spun him in his tracks, wand out, ready to defend her to the death.

"Hello, brother," rumbled a tall, impossibly black man in royal blue robes.

Corporal Loquacious J. Jones sagged to his knees. His wand fell limp at his side.

He was face to face with Antoine Shacklebolt himself, and for the first time in his life, words failed him.

* * *

The owl awakens Minerva from distant, thunderous dreams. She gives a vigorous shake of her head and pulls herself from the comfortable bed as crisply as her ancient bones can manage. She is sitting in a stiff-backed gilt chair, reading Loqi's loving and long-winded dinner invitation when she notices that Hermione has taken Minerva's gift from the day before with her. Three pears. Three Graces. The long, long memories of walls that talk.

The distant thunder of her dream returns to her. She shivers. The small hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, the bottom drops out of her heart and she finds herself falling, falling, falling and scrambling to land on her feet.

* * *

To be continued...


	11. French Postcards II

Disclaimer: None of it is mine, even the parts I made up myself.

A/N: Extreme M

* * *

The distant thunder of her dream returns to her. She shivers. The small hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, the bottom drops out of her heart and she finds herself falling, falling, falling and scrambling to land on her feet.

* * *

Hugo crashes into his sister's room and lands with a great thump on her bed. Rose is a motionless lump under the quilts, her head covered by the pillow, one foot sticking out of the bottom of the bed at a rakish angle.

"Sod off," she bellows. The sound is somewhat muffled by the layers of cloth and mattress.

"C'mon, get up! There's something wrong with the Minnie," he says, cautiously poking at the lump.

The lump kicks at him and he slides out of the way, hits the floor on his knees and says, "Rose, _come on_."

She fights her way out of the bedding and sits up. "What's wrong?" She asks. Her face is puffy, her hair is a windblown birds' nest, but her eyes are wide and alert.

"She's sitting."

"Sitting?"

"Just sitting. In the morning. No tea. No porridge. No wardrobe suggestions."

Rose squints at her brother. He is wearing the usual teenage boy uniform: tight jeans cuffed six inches above the ankle, enormous shoes, and a long shirt printed with words that are spelled to change according to the observer's mood.

"Get my dressing gown," she tells him.

* * *

The memories are mixed up, jumbled, picked over, degraded. They are also encrypted, and Hermione cannot entirely break the code. She doesn't have permission to be here. But she has learned from Ginny over the years that it is easier to get forgiveness than permission, and easiest of all to get away undetected. She plunges her head into the bowl.

Rose takes a deep breath through her mouth and exhales through her nose. Wait. Maybe it's take a deep breath through the nose and exhale through the mouth? If only mum were here.

That's silly. If Mum were here, there wouldn't be a problem, would there? But Mum's left for work and no one Rose has contacted at Chenonceau seems to know where she's gone. A dinner invitation from someone named Loquacious J. Jones sits, partially crumpled, on a small breakfast table. Minerva McGonagall stands by the hotel window. Minerva looks out over the streets of Paris with a face that makes icy little stabs in Rose's heart. Hugo sits silent, with his giant puppy eyes. She reads the invitation, looks at Minerva, and reads Hugo's tee shirt.

The tee shirt says: My Parents Went to War Against Voldemort And All I Got Was This Stupid Tee Shirt.

She takes Hugo by the arm and leads him over to where Minerva stands. She places a hand on one slim shoulder and says, "Minnie?"

Minerva turns to face her.

Rose gets a firm grip on Minerva's arm, takes another deep breath, and before anyone can react, turns all three of them around and takes a long step into nothingness.

* * *

Hermione doesn't know what she expected, but she didn't expect to be _here_.

"_It's so hard," Mara finally admits._

"_It is. Indeed," Albus Dumbledore nods in agreement. "But not impossible. The whole world is built on the creativity of lovers."_

_Mara takes a handful of lemon drops from an enamel bowl. She puts them one by one into her mouth and sucks contemplatively. Albus Dumbledore lays flat palms on his desk and says, "Now, if you'll excuse us, Miss Hooch, I'd like to talk to Miss McGonagall about the matter that sent me looking for her in the first place."_

_Mara shakes her head. "I'll stay," she says._

_Dumbledore looks over his glasses at Minerva. "It's about Mars," he tells her. _

_The girl's breath catches in her throat. She meets Dumbledore's steely gaze head-on for one, two, three seconds._

"_It's all right, Mara," she says, "It's just some silly thing Big Bother's done. Go put the locker room in order and I'll catch up with you." Minerva's tone is light. Mara is too busy sucking lemon sherbets to notice that it doesn't match the expression on her face. _

_When they are alone, Albus Dumbledore silently regards the girl before him. She waits as patiently as she can. But if she were a very little bit shorter, her feet would be swinging furiously under her chair._

"_Mars is missing," he says._

"_Is he?" _

"_Yes. Your parents say that he's taken most of his personal belongings with him. Do you have any information that might shed some light on the situation?"_

"_No," Minerva answers._

_He peers at her over the rim of his glasses. She squirms. Occlumency is not her strong suit. Her brain passes out information like Albus Dumbledore passes out candy._

"_No information? Or no light?" He asks._

_Her tense little shoulders sag and she looks at her hands while not answering his question._

"_The logical conclusion is that he's gone to fight," Dumbledore says. "What do you think?"_

_She examines her short fingernails._

"_My Dear, your brother's life could be at stake. I promise that any information you give me will be used only by me, and only for Mars' own good. Now, has Mars gone to fight Grindelwald?"_

_When she looks up at him, her eyes are luminous with tears. "No," she says, "He's gone to join him."_

* * *

When the little family arrives in the garden of the Chateau de Chenonceau, Rose is holding her breath, Hugo is grinning, and Minerva McGonagall is white as the hewn stone.

"What in HELL was that?" She demands, gripping Rose's upper arms hard enough to bruise.

"Side-along apparition," Rose answers, refusing to flinch, and making herself as tall and imposing as possible, a tactic that leaves her glaring defiantly at Minerva's chin.

"How dare you!" Minerva hisses.

"TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF OF ME!" Rose yells.

Minerva obeys instinctively and staggers back. Hugo moves toward his sister, propelled by the suddenly murderous expression on Minerva's face.

"Mum's missing," he says.

Both Rose and Minerva make sudden, sharp turns to look at him.

"We tried to contact her earlier. Nobody knows where she is," He says. "And you keep getting younger."

Minerva is perfectly still for several seconds. She doesn't blink. She doesn't breathe. Not even the breeze dares to ruffle her robe.

Then she buries her face in her hands and groans.

* * *

_Minerva inhales the smoke from an unfiltered cigarette. She leans back against a dirty stone wall by the Seine, stares up at the towers of Notre Dame. Her fingers trace runes on the rock._

_The boy walks by slowly. His shoulders are not yet wide as they will someday grow. His beard is a whisper of fuzz under his chin. Too young to have fought. Lucky to have survived. He's got a bottle of green liquor in a canvas sack._

_The bed is thin and narrow. He pulls the bottle from the sack, pulls the stopper and drinks, nearly choking. Minerva takes the bottle from his soft hand and pours two long swallows down her throat. She pulls her shirt over her head, wiggles out of her bra, pours the liquor over her aureola and offers one perfect, brown nipple to the boy's trembling lips._

_He cries after the first time he comes inside her. He yells in triumph after the second._

_When the bottle is gone and he has spilled his last over her upturned face, he backs away._

_She tries to stop him as he leaves, but she can't make herself move from the corner where she vomits his come into a spreading puddle of green._

* * *

The last time Minerva walked the Great Hall at Chenonceau, it was stripped bare, and musty from flood and disuse. Now as she sprints down the long corridor, she can see bright light coming though the opposite door. Light at the end of a long tunnel. She turns a sharp left just before the light envelops her. It isn't just a physical turn. It is a magical one. The tapestries on the walls of the Guard's Room roar to life. The chapel beyond isn't precisely the one that the tourists see. The children, who have been trailing her closely, cannot follow her here.

* * *

_The great glowing man on the screen talks to the woman beside him. He says, "I remember every detail. The Germans wore gray. You wore blue."_

_Minerva tries to breathe quietly, tries not to alert those around her to the beautifully manicured hand that has reached past the hem of her skirt, pushed her thighs apart, insinuated itself into her private places. She grits her teeth as the fingers move in and out of her. Her knuckles grow white on the arms of her seat. The screen shows stock newsreel footage of the German forces goose-stepping through the Arc d'Triumph. Mars was in there somewhere. One of those tiny dots on the screen was her brother._

_The woman on the screen is crying when Minerva comes. The hand politely excuses itself. It never occurs to her to steal a sideways glance at the stranger it had belonged to._

* * *

Hermione is in the Chapel, standing before the altar. It is full daylight and the walls glow. The sun streams across her. It is a physical thing, this sunlight. It has texture. Minerva sees it play across her lover's breasts, her belly, between her legs. She can sense its warmth entering and spreading through the still woman.

There is no pulling her away from that light. Not even Minerva McGonagall has the strength to do that. If she could, she would kill it. Bury it. Burn it to a fine, dark ash. But it is too late for that. All she can do is wrap her arms around Hermione and hold her fiercely, desperately, despairingly.

_Listen_, she thinks, without really forming thoughts into words, _you are__ everything I have lived all these long years for_—

Minerva's thoughts tumble apart in a sob. Her hands tremble. She will hold Hermione. She will hold her. She will hold her, and if the next expression she sees in those magic-dimmed eyes is disgust, then she will die right here in this chapel, where she has prayed for death so many times before.

* * *

_Hermione runs away from a smoking wreck. The stink of dark magic rolls in clouds down the long meadow. She follows Minerva, who carries a thin, pale, terrified, muggleborn boy in her arms. Minerva trips, drops the child, turns to look at what has made her fall. It is the blackened stump of an arm, bits of sleeve, a large hand. The hand still grips an ornately carved ebony wand._

* * *

Minerva is in front of her. Minerva is behind her. Hermione can't see, but she is aware of her. Her hands stroke Hermione's hair. She hears the beloved voice whispering in her ear. The words aren't clear, but her heart hears them.

* * *

_Hands unbutton her robes, her shirt, her skirt. Hands undress her completely, stopping to caress her skin along the way. Hermione remembers. But she can't remember. This has never happened to her. She looks at her hands. They are Minerva's hands. They reach out to grab whatever they might find. There is a soft chaise longue beneath her and a room filled with powdered and pressed women. She is at a party. She is in the home of a famous old witch who has brought her here and introduced her to the brilliant and glittering guests as a genuine war hero. Feminine mouths kiss the backs of her knees, run up her thighs. Mouths bite at her nipples, kiss her lips. More hands than she can count reach for her, touch her, snatch at her, hold her down, pull at her._

_She wants to get away. When she has come so often that she can hardly stand, she crawls away into the garden, transfigures herself, hides beneath the suffocating flowers._

_She sprints across a battlefield. Tanks explode. Big guns liquefy the earth all around her. She cowers in the hole. Something heavy lands on top of her._

_The sweet, brown man looks at her like he is dying of thirst and she is water. She is tired and too terrified to think. There's never time to think, anyway. There is only time to run, to act, to fight and not look back. He takes the time to kiss. They wrap themselves around one another. He talks too much. He tells her how beautiful she is. He tells her how amazing and strong she is. She wants him inside her more than she has ever wanted anything. Because he is good. He is all goodness and she needs to be filled with him._

_"I know you aren't Catholic," Loqi says. "But it's all the same god, I think. I know what you did. We all did it. We all did. Every mother's child that ever took up arms in a war has killed his own brother. Just talk to him? Get it out and get it over with? Won't hurt nothin', will it?"_

_The only thing she can still feel is a kind of leftover love for this good man. _

_But once she's in the little box with the priest's voice so low and resonant in her ear, she confesses that she wants to fuck right on the altar._

_He takes her roughly by the wrist and leads her across the transepts, past the altar. He leads her out the side door and into another building, down long, plain corridors._

_Her hands are tied to the bars on his window. Her whole body is aflame with the blows from his hand and the leather strap. He pounds into her from behind, both ways, alternating, seeming to delight in the profaning of one with the essence of the other. She opens wider to accept him, staring at her hands, wondering idly if she'll ever be permitted to see his face_.

_When she leaves the next day, Loqi is waiting for her. The look in her eyes makes him cry the tears he has been holding back all night. With the sun bouncing off his loose khaki trousers and white linen shirt, he is perfect. A saint who survived his own burning. He takes her gently into his arms and walks her someplace where they can apparate unseen. When they reappear, it is in the garden of the Chateau de Chenonceau. The garden is being replanted. Tiny saplings struggle for life where huge oaks once stood. There, at the entrance, someone waits for Minerva._

* * *

Hermione flinches. Her lungs seize with panic.

She is pulled upward, outward, flailing her arms and legs and trying to fly as the people below her grow smaller and smaller. With a pop, she pulls her head out of a silver bowl and finds that she is lying face down on a cold stone floor and that Minerva is down there with her.

Hermione looks at her, and it is as if she has never seen her before.

The door to the chapel opens and an old man enters. "Hello, sisters," he says.

* * *

To be continued...


	12. French Postcards III

A/N- Sorry. After this, there shall be a squid interlude and more dancing.

* * *

Rose looks at the invitation still in her hands. "Did I do the right thing?" She whispers.

"It's like the kneazles," Hugo whispers back.

"Like walking in on Mum and Dad when everything goes quiet and stiff and something is sucking all the air out of the room," Rose says.

"They know when acromantulas are about," Hugo tells her, "Gives 'em the yips."

"Like if we move too suddenly, the whole world will break apart. What was that place?"

"I think maybe it was a giant pensieve," Hugo says, shivering. "The whole room."

"We can't even bloody well ask, can we?"

"Could we ask _him_?"

"Would that make Mum angry?" Rose wonders.

"Or the Minnie?"

"She can't even look at Mum. Have you noticed?"

"Mum can't look at us," Hugo observes.

Their foreheads are pressed nearly together as they follow the three silent adults to a portkey out in the formal garden. Rose has summoned the big American wizard called Loquacious J. Jones and he has tidied everything and everyone up. They could all pass for ordinary tourists. Mum's in a blue sundress and the Minnie is wearing beige cotton slacks with a white blouse.

"Rose?"

"What?"

"How much trouble are we in?"

"I don't know."

"Do we get to keep being a family?"

"They can't even look at each other. Look at them. Do you think they'll ever want to touch each other again?"

"They touch each other?"

"Lovers generally do, Goofus."

One step.

Two steps.

Three steps.

"They have SEX?"

Rose steps off the path and yanks her brother along. "Shhhhhhh! They'll hear you!"

"But they have sex?"

"Why do you think they live together, genius?"

"Well obviously they love each other, but-" Hugo flounders.

Rose gives him that big sister look. He hates that big sister look.

"You mean _sex_ sex? Like shagging? But-"

"Oh, go on," Rose shoves him back out onto the path and pushes him in front of her until his big feet can once again work on their own. He looks at the three adults now far ahead of him. The big American keeps a hand on the small of the Minnie's back, guiding and steadying her. He's never seen anyone touch Minerva McGonagall like that. She and Mum walk side by side, kept at an odd distance like magnets faced to the same pole. They walk like mirror images of one another. They walk like two people who belong to each other.

They walk like Mum and Dad.

Suddenly, Hugo is angry. Why can't grownups just behave themselves? Why do they have to drag him through all this—this—bloody _shite_? And where are they going, anyway? Wherever it is, Hugo reckons there better be some food there. It's gone lunchtime with all this running around solving problems he doesn't understand. And he hasn't had his breakfast yet.

"Do you think they snog?" He asks his sister.

* * *

The south of France hits Hugo like a splash of cold water first thing in the morning. In fact, the portkey puts him down knee-deep in the ocean on a sunny, sandy beach. He trudges out of the surf to join the others, who have landed further up a sheltered cove.

They round a corner. A loud and buzzing marketplace appears. It is a great square stuffed with flags, booths, shoppers, hagglers, lined old wizards in white robes and tanned young witches in sparkling bikini tops and translucent skirts. Hugo smells flowers and suntan lotion and salt air and above all, the glorious aroma of good things cooking.

* * *

"Jambalaya!" Mr. Jones announces. He puts a steaming plate of something on the table in front of Hugo.

Hugo eyes it dubiously. There is some sort of dead invertebrate involved in this food.

The inn is abuzz with young people; caramel girls and mocha boys and creamy café-au-lait little ones who greet him like a long-lost cousin, who rush en masse at Minerva to collect hugs and kisses. They all call Mr. Jones Gran Pear.

Gran Pear. Whenever anyone says it, Molly Weasley tromps through Hugo's thoughts.

"You're not hungry?" Mr. Jones asks. At least, that's what Hugo thinks he asks. His French is completely incomprehensible and his English is not much clearer.

"Erm," says Hugo. He sniffs at his food. It smells edible. What are those green things, precisely?

"Humor an old mudblood, boy," says Mr. Jones.

Hugo gasps. Rose gapes. The Minnie freezes with her wine glass raised halfway to her lips.

"We don't use that word in front of the children, Mr. Jones," Mum says. Her voice is ice. And now conversation really stops, because those are the first words she has spoken all day.

The Minnie finishes sipping her wine and puts the glass carefully back down on the table.

"That so?" The old wizard asks. He seems genuinely surprised. He spreads his arms, then claps his hands and rubs his palms together. "Well, now. Let me tell you children a story about that."

A collective groan escapes the scurry of grandchildren.

"Hush up," Mr. Jones intones. They hush. He clears his throat. "Minerva and I met the day the Nazis chased me into a foxhole outside Bourgaltroff," Mr. Jones starts.

Mum's face is a white mask of anger.

"Loqi," the Minnie warns. Her voice is barely above a whisper, but Hugo has learned not to cross her when she uses that tone.

"I landed on her head," Loqi goes on, apparently oblivious to danger. "She tried to scratch my eyes out!"

"I did not," Minerva huffs.

"Were you in your animagus form?" Rose asks.

Minerva nods. "I was observing the forward movement of the 761st tank battalion for the Resistance."

"You were with a Muggle battalion?" Hugo asks Loqi Jones. The Minnie calls him Loqi. After the second forkful of the bizarre but delicious stuff on his plate, Hugo feels friendlier.

"I was, and proud of it, too. Back in those days, wizards like me didn't have much access to education. Not where I was from, anyway. Oh, I had a wand and a few basic spells. But only a handful of my people really knew what they were doing."

"Like Antoine Shacklebolt!" Hugo warms to the story.

"Big Juju, old Antoine," Loqi gives a shake of his head toward the wall and Hugo notices that a wizard portrait hangs there. In it, Antoine Shacklebolt himself stands with one arm around Mr. Jones' shoulders. They hold their wands up and crossed in the symbol of the Resistance. There are other photos on the wall. Most look like members of the endless Jones family. But some are old Muggle photographs of Black American soldiers. Others are of people Hugo recognizes. The Minnie is there with Minister Kingsley Shacklebolt and Loqi Jones. Albus Dumbledore poses alone. Well, not posing, precisely. He appears to be waving one finger about in circles and doing some sort of shuffling, toe-pointing _thing_ with his feet.

"After she pulled me out of that old foxhole and set me up with Shacklebolt, I got some more training. I was Minerva McGonagall's first student!"

"Brilliant," Rose says.

"Yeah," agrees Hugo, pulled back into the conversation by his sister's voice.

"Then they put me back with my old outfit. The Black Panthers, they called us. The Nazi units each had one of Grindelwald's dark wizards traveling with them, you see. Antoine figured each of the allied outfits needed some extra help, too. So I caught up with my buddies just in time to cross the Seigfried line. We pushed on into the heart of the Third Reich. By the final years of the war, we were far into Austria. The Nazis were in retreat, broken, beaten, burning their uniforms and stealing farmer's britches right off the clothesline so they could walk home in peace.

"Some of them saw us coming and shot themselves rather than be forced to surrender to the _untermenschen_."

Hugo sees Minerva sneak a glance at Mum. Mum's face has softened. She listens intently to Loqi's musical voice. The Minnie takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, opens them again and sips her wine. Her hands, Hugo notices, tremble. He thinks about her in a foxhole under fire from a panzer division. He thinks about her dueling Voldemort in the last war. He thinks about her facing a classroom full of first years.

Hugo knows that she is probably the bravest girl in the world, even braver than Aunt Ginny. He also knows that right now, she is jumpy as a hinkypunk.

He hopes Mum still loves her. He likes the way she cooks him all the porridge he wants every morning. He likes watching Quidditch with her. She knows all about the players. She knows all about everything. He likes being able to ask her questions instead of having to look everything up in some dusty old book. He can't wait to go back to school and punch the lips off the first git to call her "Old Sourpuss" within his hearing. Al says he'll help. Granny Molly says the Headmistress is a Weasley now and we've all got to look after her.

"_Untermenschen_? That means almost the same thing as mudblood, doesn't it?" Rose asks.

Mr. Jones nods. "One day, we stopped far away from any marked village. But we smelled something. Do you know that nasty smell only we humans can make? The tanks were tucked in for the night, but a few of us were sent out on patrol in the woods. There were still saboteurs straggling behind the retreat. When I patrolled, I kept my sidearm holstered and my wand at the ready. There are some things in this world that bullets won't stop."

"Nogtails!" Hugo contributes. He is roundly ignored.

"I heard a noise in the woods. Footsteps. Someone or something rushing. It wasn't quiet, either. Something was thrashing around out there. Night was falling and I couldn't make anything out in the shadows, so I used the trees for cover, followed the direction of the noise and cast a _lumos_ for light.

"All of a sudden, I heard someone hollering, 'Mudblood! Mudblood!'

"I aimed my wand, but there in the light was something pale as death. Nothing but rag and bone. At first, I thought it was an Inferus. It flopped around on the ground like it was wounded. But when I got closer, I realized it was just a little kid too exhausted to move. I couldn't even believe it was still alive. Just see-through skin stretched over skull. But it kept yelling at the top of its lungs, 'Mudblood! Mudblood!'

"_Damn_, I thought to myself, _even out here in the woods halfway around the world, and I can't get away from this shit_."

The Minnie's voice is quiet but firm. "The old European purebloods used to contend that there is no such thing as a true African wizard. Anyone dark as Loqi must therefore be—muggleborn, at best. _Mudblood_ once referred exclusively to wizards of African descent," she says.

"Can't resist, can you?" Mr. Jones teases.

"No," Minerva admits.

Hugo thinks maybe, maybe he's caught the ghost of a smile flickering across Mum's face.

"But even as I was thinking that, I realized something. That skull was smiling at me. Smiling just as big as you please, and holding its arms out like it wanted to be picked up.

"And it sounded _happy._

"So I took a chance, pocketed my wand and lifted it up. Didn't weigh nothing at all. And it was then that I realized that it wasn't a little child, but a young woman no bigger than a child. She was starved and beaten and hollow around the eyes like someone who'd been crucio'd maybe once or six times too often.

"This thing lifted up her poor skinny face and kissed my hand, my uniform, and both my cheeks. She buried her face in my neck and kept saying it over and over again to herself, 'Mudblood, mudblood.'

"She babbled to me in German and French and pointed me in a certain direction. I carried her back to my unit, where one of the guys who spoke German told me that there was some kind of concentration camp nearby. A prison. It was full of people who called themselves something he didn't understand. He said she must be hallucinating, because she told him stories about evil sorcerers and experiments and mass killings.

"Turns out, she was the lookout. The Nazis had pulled out a few days before, after killing most of the able-bodied. The survivors didn't know who might be coming back. It might have been Grindelwald coming back to torture them some more. Or it might have been the Russians coming from the east. Uncle Joe Stalin was no friend of Baba Yaga, let me tell you.

"So when Marie saw me with my old black face and my wand out, she knew it could only mean one thing. The Americans had arrived."

Mr. Jones pauses and stands up straight. It seems to Hugo that he grows six inches taller and thirty years younger in that moment.

"They'd all been praying, you see, praying that the Americans would come to rescue them. And so this little lookout shouted out the only English word she knew that would get the message across real fast. Shouted it loud so everyone back at the concentration camp could hear her and not kill themselves in a panic."

"Mudblood," Mum says. Her face is thoughtful.

"Mudblood," Loqi confirms. "And I have never been so proud to be called anything in all my life."

Hugo sits for a long time, thinking, while everyone else eats. He stares longingly at his empty plate. The Minnie waves her wand and refills it.

After another plate of food, Hugo notices that everyone at the inn appears to be related to Mr. Jones.

"Whatever happened to the girl?" He asks.

Loqi beams.

"Marie!" He calls. "Marie, where are you hiding?"

An old witch comes out of the kitchen shaking a wooden spoon and fussing in French at Mr. Jones. She is petite, thin about the shoulders but thick around the hips, and her shining silver hair cascades down her back. She shakes her spoon at Mr. Jones a few more times, yells something that sounds like orders at the scurry of grandchildren, then stops beside the Minnie's chair. She throws her arms around Minerva, kisses her on both cheeks, plops herself down on her lap, and swallows the rest of the wine from her glass. The Minnie murmurs words Hugo can't quite catch.

Then she says more clearly, "Marie Jones, this is Hermione Granger-Weasley. And these," she nods in Hugo's direction, "Are our children Rose and Hugo."

When Marie reaches out to take Hermione's hand, Mum's eyes go wide as the china.

* * *

Dessert is served. Rose thinks about things she has seen on Granddad Arthur's television, the one Grandmum has enchanted to broadcast only cultural programs. She thinks of ancient Muggle newsreel footage of soldiers pulling emaciated survivors out of concentration camps. Wait until she tells Granddad that she's met one of the liberators of Zaubergard!

* * *

Hermione spoons up her lemon sorbet and remembers Dean and Luna clinging to one another every night in the spare bedroom of Shell Cottage. She watches the dancing gestures that pass between Loquacious J. Jones and the woman she thought was Minerva McGonagall. They flow so easily together. Who is this Minerva? As if in answer, Hermione is visited by the memory of another Minerva, a younger one that seemed so much older. That one handed Hermione a time-turner and drilled her in its proper use.

What would Hermione's younger self have thought, had someone said to her, "That woman will be your lover."

Ridiculous. Ridiculous. Yet here they both are, brittle from the possibility of parting.

She imagines Minerva alone in that foxhole. She imagines Minerva coming out of the priest's room with no one to meet her. She wants to throw her arms around the neck of Loquacious Jones and kiss him like Marie once did, in an ashen forest, years and years ago.

She thinks about the Minerva who offered her broken self to a new-made man. Whole, he seems in Hermione's borrowed memory. Pure.

She looks at Minerva and Marie and Loquacious J. Jones as they enjoy one another's company. She marvels at the strength in their thin old bones. How many children have they nurtured between them? What screaming horrors and quiet miseries have they endured in order to make this world safe for families like the one gathered around this table? Hermione wants to pepper all three of them with questions, but Rose and Hugo are quicker than their mother.

"Did you ever duel one of Grindelwald's dark wizards?" Asks Rose.

"Yes," Minerva answers.

"Did you win?" Asks Hugo.

"Obviously."

"Were you ever injured?" Rose asks.

"Yes," Minerva answers.

"Were there scars? Do they show?" Hugo asks.

"Occasionally," Minerva answers.

Loqi pours more wine.

"Why did you join?" Rose asks.

The table goes quiet. Rose narrows her eyes. If the silence alarms her, she doesn't let it show. She does not turn her face away, even as Minerva concentrates on the contents of her glass. Loqi looks at her mildly. Marie places a small hand over Minerva's longer one.

"Minerva." Hermione's voice causes everyone to snap to attention. "Why did you join?"

Minerva looks up at her. Their eyes meet and hold. Hermione feels what she has long felt, only now fully recognizing it. She feels love and respect and lust and passion and sheer gnawing need for this woman who is to a book what a forest is to one small acorn. In those eyes is knowledge that Hermione craves, even when it angers her, or scares her, or repels her or thrills her or mystifies her. She wants to _know_.

Hermione is the trespasser here. She is the one who violated Minerva in the magical sanctuary. She is the one who made the mess that needed to be cleaned up before Wizengamot authorities found out. She is the one Minerva could not even _look_ at afterward.

"Please," Hermione repeats. "Tell me why you joined."

Minerva puts down her empty glass. "I'll show you," she says.

* * *

The place isn't far. They apparate there together. Hermione recognizes it. Minerva stands on the spot where the railroad used to run. Now, it is a greenway in a restored medieval village near Millau. She and Loqi and the children gather around her as she talks.

"When I was fifteen, Albus called me into his office to tell me that my brother Mars had disappeared. I knew that he had gone off to join Grindelwald. My parents disowned him. I was so angry and ashamed, I wanted to run off right then to find him. I imagined I could talk sense to him, or somehow force him to come back home with me. Even then, I was pretty good with an Imperius curse."

Rose folds her arms over her chest. Hugo's eyes go wide.

"We had practiced on each other, you see. Mars and I."

Hermione remembers the haunted face of a slim young man in a dark jacket. She shudders.

"But Dumbledore had other plans. He convinced me to undertake the animagus training. He said that we should make practical use of my gift for the physical."

The adults stifle giggles while the youngsters, oblivious, solemnly nod.

"In the middle of my seventh year, however, I could wait no longer. Stories of the American and Canadian wizards reached us at Hogwarts. Dumbledore told us of Antoine Shacklebolt and those brave ones who volunteered for no other reason than it was the right thing to do. I found them and joined the Resistance. My animagus training, and the form I take, quickly put me on the front lines.

"Not long afterward, I was part of a plan to stop the trains that carried troops, supplies, and human slave labor as cargo from the front lines back to the Nazi strongholds. I have always been good at wards and protective spells. I helped to set up traps along the tracks."

As Minerva speaks, the memories from years before come flooding back to her. They have a peculiar quality, because she has left the fresh memories behind in the Resistance archive that now forms the basis of the International Wizengamot's historical database. But memory isn't that simple. Each act is connected in so many ways with so many other feelings, sensations, ideas and memories. Minerva remembers, but as if from a great distance.

She knows that this is the only reason she can now stand here and speak coherently of what came next.

* * *

_She lies in her human form in the tall grass with the others. Some are wizards, some are Muggles. Her wand is out. With her cat hearing, she knows the train approaches. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand up in warning and anticipation. She fights the urge to arch her back and hiss. The magic is strong. But this is not her first train. The enemy probably won't expect or detect her counterspells and disruptive charms._

_The train passes the first checkpoint. The minor shields should be disabled._

_Something is wrong. As soon as the magical protection disappears, some power reinstates it. Now Minerva senses it. There is a wizard aboard. He or she is casting the spells live, refreshing each one at regular intervals. She knows that the wizard will be riding up front, heavily protected by muggle weapons and far away from the ordinary rabble the train carries as cargo in its rear boxcars. Quickly, she changes form and sprints out to a place where the tracks carve a great turn. When the train slows to take the curve, she rushes forward at top speed, darts onto the tracks beneath the rushing train and leaps up onto a grillwork of connectors between cars. Securing her position, she changes back to human form and shinnies up a ladder so that she is riding on top of the passenger car._

_This is the right car. She can sense the magical power beneath her._

_The wind rips at her long braid as she clings to the thin steel ladderwork. She can't hear her own movements with the roar of the train beneath her. It is like riding her father's broom over the loch at home. Clinging with one hand, she pulls her wand._

_Now what?_

_Then she feels it. She has been detected. The Avada Kedavra rattles the welded steel beneath her. But her assailant cannot see her. The curse loses power without focus. It dissipates into the body of the train itself. Unless…yes!_

_Of course. So simple._

_She uses her bare hands and feet to gather the power of the curse itself, gather it into her own wand. Then she imagines the wizard below her. She sees in her mind an arm, a hand, some kind of wand._

_Pulling her wand as far back as she can, she abruptly hurls a great Expelliarmus! against the monstrous train and roaring wind._

_The car erupts in a shower of green sparks. She is ripped from her mooring, manages to transform in mid-air, and lands with a storm of pain on little cat feet in the soft grass of the meadow. She crouches, listening to the great engines explode in a collision of magic and Muggle technology. Exhausted, she crawls off toward the cover of the treeline._

_The huge black snake of a train slowly grinds to a halt behind her. Her companions fight forward, taking out what remains of the enemy until they can throw open the boxcar doors and force the serpent to disgorge the contents of its belly onto the green grass of the meadow. Rested, she runs forward to help evacuate the prisoners. A muggleborn child clings to her as she searches the high grass for a safe place to hide him._

* * *

"And that's when you found the wand," Hermione finishes. Minerva is pulled from the smoke and ruin. She sees her lover's face close to her own. Hermione has moved beside her, put one arm around her waist. Minerva leans into the shorter woman and nods. Strong arms hold her. She leans her cheek against Hermione's forehead and closes her eyes against the vision.

"It was Mars," Minerva says, surprised as always by the clarity of her own voice even in times like these.

Hermione is with her. Hermione, who has seen her own wars and her own horrors, and knows without having to be told. Hermione, who does not yet understand, but loves her anyway. She feels two lips searching for her own and allows herself to be kissed.

She opens her eyes to see Loqi with a hand on the shoulder of each child. He gathers them into his great arms. Hugo is taller than her friend. He nevertheless allows himself to be squeezed.

"Merlin's scrote! They _do_ snog," Hugo blurts.

Minerva releases Hermione, who insinuates her arm back around Minerva's slim waist.

"I cursed the ground I found it on. I took Mars' own wand and cursed for all time the earth where it fell. Just there," she points.

The assembled wizards in their Muggle traveling clothes turn to look at the spot Minerva indicates. They note the busy parking lot. The throngs of tourists. The golden arches reaching up to the sky and falling back to earth.

"Suppose they have McNuggets?" Hugo asks.

* * *

A/N-I owe Loqi's story to a real WWII veteran and tank driver for the 761st battalion. Substitute the "N" word for "mudblood" and you'll have the basic idea.


	13. Hermione

At first, Hermione thinks that sex with a woman will be different from sex with a man because a woman can't put herself inside you the way a man can.

But the first time Minerva holds her close, looks into her eyes and slips one slender finger inside her, all of Hermione's beliefs about penetration turn liquid and flow away.

The first time Minerva reaches deep into her with four sensitive fingers and pulls out one endless, ecstatic moment, Hermione believes she is as full as it is possible to be--full of physical sensation, full of wonder, full of the love given by the most magnificent being Hermione can imagine. "Open yourself for me," Minerva whispers. So Hermione does.

She has learned that sex isn't just something to do while the children are sleeping. Sex changes things. The woman who rises from Minerva's arms is never the same as the one who fell into them.

It is just before dawn. She looks down from the high bedroom window of McGonagall Manor. Her beloved sleeps on the bed some few feet away.

She thinks about how each time she believes she has taken as much of Minerva into herself as she can hold, something expands and she finds that there is room for more.

This morning, long after the lovemaking has ended, she wakes with the salty taste of Minerva's tears still on her lips. Minerva's need, cried out in the universal language of lovers since the beginning of time, still sounds in her memory. It echoes in the morning song of living things, awake like her to greet the coming day. She hears how wanted she is. How needed. How connected.

Inside her. Minerva is _inside_ her.


	14. Picnic

Disclaimer: It's Jo's world. We just live in it.

* * *

It happens this way.

Minerva Mcgonagall, on little cat feet, creeps up to the Burrow's crooked kitchen door and raises her knuckles to knock. The door opens. A great ball of yarn engulfs her. Minerva paws at the air around her, tries to get a grip on her attacker, but only succeeds in toppling arse-over-teakettle into the rosemary.

Hurricane Molly, squealing up a squall, moves on to her next victim. Hermione is more prepared than Minerva, but still not prepared to answer Molly's first question.

"And where in HELL have you two been?" Feet apart. Hands on hips. A wooden spoon agitatedly stirs the air behind her left ear as she looks back and forth from Minerva to Hermione to Minerva.

"FRANCE!" Rose and Hugo, bringing up the rear, answer in unison.

Molly pauses. Her next words sit unspoken on her lips. Her sudden lack of motion creates a vacuum that the universe fills by hurling a 20,000 year old glacier down upon an unsuspecting alpine town. The town is unsuspecting because its inhabitants have taken their pets and farm animals to Geneva just this morning. When they return, they will be unsettled to find several million metric tons of ice where their homes and schools and yogurt parlors once were.

It turns out they are insured for glaciers. So the whole situation is not as bad as it might have been.

"France, you say?" Molly asks, head cocked in deep concentration.

"Yes," Minerva answers. She removes herself from the shrubbery. Hermione nods and makes noises of general agreement.

"That'd do it," Molly says.

* * *

Ron is not listening. He sits hunched over the chessboard while the dust of the attic settles on his hair and his nose and his shoulders. The ghoul mirrors him, considering the arrangement of pieces on the board.

"It's a parade, really. They dress them up in ribbons and costumes and march them up and down the streets. Then this priest fellow gets up on a big box and blesses them, and then there's contests and pageants and…"

"What would we take, then? The garden gnomes? Doxies?"

"The Squid!"

Ron snorts at his brother without looking up. "The Squid? Are you mental? Do you know how much that thing must weigh?"

"Well, that's the technical bit to work out. But they've got a lovely lake up there in Geneva, and I'm sure we'd win any contest we entered. I mean, who else in the world has a freshwater squid? It's brilliant."

Ron briefly considers enumerating the several really good reasons why kidnapping Hogwarts' giant squid and taking him/her/it on a Swiss vacation is not, in fact, brilliant. Instead, he moves his knight behind his opponent's leading pawn and smiles grimly to himself.

The ghoul throws himself on the chessboard and sobs at a volume and register only certain extremely masculine grey whales could match.

"There, there," Ron pats the rotting rags. "You'll get the hang of this eventually."

_Bugger Ron. He's as bad as Percy._ George slips back down the attic stairs, muttering to himself and wondering how, exactly, he might explain to that poor stupid ghoul that Ron cheats.

* * *

Angelina never seems to age. There is a brief awkward moment as she rises to greet Hermione and Minerva in the parlor. She has been deep in conversation, Hermione notices, with Ron's new wife. Hilda Hampden-Wimple is vanilla blonde, apple-cheeked, and round in a way that makes men have erotic thoughts about treacle sponge and bread-and-butter pudding.

The awkwardness is broken when Freddy and Teddy swoop in to plant kisses on Hermione's cheeks. Freddy's long red hair clashes wonderfully with his caramel skin. Teddy, talented as he is, has never quite matched it.

"Aunt Hermione!" Freddy beams.

"Uncle Minerva!" Teddy adds, and gets a quick cuff to the back of his electric blue head. Hilda giggles. They scoop her up, crash through the kitchen and out the back door.

Hermione sighs. She doesn't resent Hilda. She often daydreams about saving the child from a lifetime of Ronald. She sincerely hopes that Ronald has learned from his mistakes. She does not hold her breath.

As Rose and Hugo greet their aunt, Hermione remembers the first time Angelina came to dinner.

It was Halloween of the year Voldemort fell. The mood at the Weasley table was doing its best to be festive, but it just kept running into an empty place where Fred should have been, coming over all sodden and wonky, and going off to pout. The storm raging outside didn't help. Everyone kept glancing up at the clock to look at Fred's hand, which had been hovering between "Beyond the Veil" and "Trenton, New Jersey" for months.

Maybe the noise of the storm muffled Angelina's knock. Maybe she hadn't knocked. Hermione only remembers that she was suddenly there, in the kitchen, shaking off her wet hooded robes. Before anyone could process what was happening, she'd taken the hand of an astonished Molly and placed it low against her newly rounded belly.

"Oh," Molly said. Then, as something jumped and kicked at the sound of her voice, "Oh!"

She sank to her knees there at Angelina's feet, her face cradled next to the new life, and sobbed.

Angelina sobbed, too. Percy was the next to go, with George wrapping both Angelina and his mum up in long arms. It wasn't long before the mood was up and about and sobbing jubilantly along with everyone else.

Angelina filled the empty space next to George. She has occupied it ever since.

* * *

"Headmistress," Angelina smiles warmly and takes Minerva's hand in her own.

"Minerva, please."

"You'll be playing with us tonight, then. Yes?" Angelina asks. The warmth in her tone sparks into a roaring fire of fanaticism.

To Minerva's puzzled expression, Hermione shrugs, answers Angelina with a cryptic, "We'll see," and steers Minerva into the kitchen where she points out the clock with Fred's hand still hovering between "Beyond the Veil" and "Trenton, New Jersey".

Molly conducts a cabbage and carrot symphony in the corner. "You've both been stuck in "Existential Angst" for days," she says.

Minerva is astonished to see that one of the hands of the clock has her own portrait pasted upon it. There is also one with Hermione's likeness. Both now point to "Home".

"France," Molly mumbles and shakes her head.

* * *

"Mine!"

"Mine!"

"I called her first!"

"Mine by right!"

"What right?"

"In-law rights!"

"You're daft!"

Hermione pulls her wand and bolts like a racehorse. She wears slacks and trainers, so has the advantage of Minerva in summer robes. Molly grips her flopping aprons as she runs, but soon gives up and flails to a stop while the other women dash through the garden, round the corner of the shed and burst through the hedge to the family quidditch pitch.

Hermione lacks Molly's mass, but she makes up for it with acceleration. She lands on Ginny with a solid thump, captures her in a giant bear hug, and signals a baffled Minerva to subdue the enraged Angelina.

Minerva does. With one eyebrow.

"What's all this?" Minerva demands. Her teacher-voice is so practiced and assured, even Hermione feels temporarily guilty.

Angelina shuffles. Her multicolored linen tunic ripples in the slight breeze. Ginny, in trousers, tee-shirt, and a battered denim jacket, frees her arms just enough to hug her captor. "Good to see you, 'Mione! Get off."

Hermione helps her up, dusts her off, hugs her back. All three women exchange glances under Minerva's narrow-eyed glare.

Angelina finds her composure first. "The quidditch match—whose side are you on?"

Minerva drops her shoulders and opens her eyes wide. "The Holyhead Harpies, usually. Why?"

"Saw that one coming," Ginny mumbles, then puffs, "Oomph," as Hermione pokes her.

"No," Angelina explains, laying a possessive hand on Minerva's elbow, "Not league play. Weasley play. The annual Weasley Women's Quidditch Match. Didn't Hermione tell you?

"Nooo," Minerva's brogue starts the word in bewilderment and draws it out long enough to end it in intrigue. She notes that Hermione has blushed a most alarming shade of puce.

"Oh, sod it," Ginny is about to burst. "We play every Midsummer's Eve. Have done since before Merlin was born. It's a tradition: Weasley Women by birth against Weasley women by marriage. But we've got special rules, see. The bludger's a flask of firewhiskey, and every time someone's hit, she has to drink. And, of course, there's the naked bit. 'Mione always plays with the wives. And I say that puts you on my team."

"Bollocks!" Bellows Angelina. She starts to say something else, but is distracted by whoever is moving quietly toward them behind Minerva's back.

Minerva concentrates, although her cat senses have already identified him by his careful tread, his clean scent, his sheer welcome familiarity.

So she doesn't flinch, doesn't move a muscle as the man steps right up behind her and dares what few others would. He pulls her into the circle of his arms and holds her there.

She relaxes into his shoulder. "Is that a bottle of Scotch in your robes or are you just glad to see me?" She whispers.

"Both," Harry chuckles.

* * *

On her way back through the garden, Molly trudges over a hillock of cabbages and scares up a cloud of fairies. They perform a midair maneuver that looks as if it might form a word: _kukhuvud_. She pulls out her wand and growls, "None of that! Not with the children about!"

The fairies disappear under cabbage leaves.

* * *

In the shed where the Ford Anglia used to live now dwells an enormous plasma-screened television. The chinks in the wooden walls have been covered in old blankets. Sagging, puffy furniture has been arranged in a semicircle and a mighty effort at cleanliness has been made by someone without the slightest idea how to clean.

Arthur beams. His feet dance. His body sways. He wields the remote control like the sword of Gryffindor, demonstrating various features to Harry and Minerva.

"It's got picture in picture," he says, and _blip_; there are two screens instead of one.

Each, Minerva notices, shows a different actor impersonating Jane Austen's Mr. Darcy.

"And recall," Arthur burbles on. _Blip_ again, and a third actor chases Jane Eyre through a dark corridor.

"High density low carb laser tracking," Arthur intones as the screen repeatedly zooms in and out on the bonneted face of an actress who bears a strong resemblance to Molly. Now a chicken. Now Molly. Now a doe-eyed young actress in Napoleonic costume. Now Molly. And finally the sharp, art-deco angles of a face belonging to an actress Minerva has never really liked. Too arch. Too shrill. Too mannered.

"And instant replay!" Arthur exults. The Molly-eyeballs-chicken-art deco sequence repeats itself in endless loop.

"Oh my," Minerva observes, shaking her empty glass at Harry, who refills it with a deep amber liquid. The three of them are alone in the shed. Angelina and Ginny are being kept busy and out of mischief by a 50-gallon drum of potatoes in need of peeling. Hermione referees them. George is stomping about the garden grumbling under his breath. Ron is missing in action. Teddy, Victoire, Freddy and Hilda have gone over the hill to visit Dr. Lovegood. The teenagers are helping their uncles Bill and Charlie feed enormous slices of sausage and pepperoni pizza to a conflagration of adolescent dragons.

Minerva observes the device in Arthur's hand. It is, she surmises, something like a wand that works exclusively on the television. "Is there a button for the adverts?" She asks.

"The whut?" Arthur pauses in his explanations, sips his Scotch, and manages to look both guilty and guileless at the same time.

"The adverts," Minerva repeats. "Horrible screeching little dramatizations that implore one to purchase useless goods and services. Is there a button that makes them go away?"

"Adverts, you call them?"

"Yes. Well, that is what Hermione calls them."

"Odd," Arthur is excited. "I've never seen one. Tell me more about them!"

Minerva sits on an overstuffed sofa and recounts the MacNugget Incident.

She has learned over the years to ignore Harry when he puts his face in his hands and howls like that. Early Muggle training is to blame, she supposes, and the difficulties of life as an auror. When she has finished recounting her tale to a fascinated Arthur, she pats Harry's knee and dabs his tears of laughter with a handkerchief until he regains his composure. It's a good thing, too, because she's no sooner got him settled and presentable than James and Albus Severus come bursting into the little shed.

Albus arrives first, all nose and hands and feet and elbows, but is quickly run over by his elder brother. "Is it a Banshee?" Albus asks from the spot where he has toppled to the floor.

"No," Arthur glances at the screen, "It appears to be Mansfield Park."

James runs a hand through his unruly hair and grins lopsidedly at his Dad. "C'mon, then! Uncle Ron's finally come out of the attic and we're all flying dragon kites."

Albus has righted himself again. He turns to Minerva, visibly steels his courage, and confides to his headmistress, "The tricky part is tying the string around their necks."

"Indeed?"

He nods and shows her his singed fingertips. She pulls out her wand, reconsiders, and slips it back into her pocket. Then she takes his left hand in hers, places the fingers to her lips, and whispers, "_Aloverum_."

Albus is as astonished at the gesture as he is at the healed skin. At that age when hands, feet, nose, and adam's apple have reached adult size well ahead of the rest of the body, he has little personal dignity to spare. Nevertheless, he offers his other fingers to be kissed.

"_Aloverum_," she breathes. The skin forms pink and new on his fingertips.

"Wandless magic, Minerva?" Harry observes, a wry grin not quite disguising the admiration in his voice.

"Ancient magic," she answers.

* * *

Angelina, Ginny, Fleur, Audrey, Hermione and Cezar all work frantically to get the last chores done and the meal on the table. Angelina and Ginny energetically whip potatoes at one another. Fleur designs the place settings. Hermione helps Molly direct traffic.

Cezar makes the salad.

"Are those _anchovies_ you're putting in there?" Audrey fusses.

"It is an old family recipe," He replies, shooing her out of the way.

"So?" Fleur's long eyelashes flutter as she corners Hermione. All the other women pause in their duties and eavesdrop.

Hermione sighs. Those bloody finance goblins from Singapore are pushovers compared to her sisters.

"I can't imagine it," Audrey narrows her lips and wrinkles her nose. Audrey has two facial expressions. In the other one, she narrows her nose and wrinkles her lips.

"Ah, but how experienced she must be!" Cezar interjects.

"Sod off, the lot of you," Hermione pushes past Fleur to take a platter of sausages from Molly.

"Aw, c'mon, Mione," Ginny chimes in, "Exactly what does Headmistress McGonagall get up to between the sheets?"

"Ginevra!" Molly threatens her daughter with a sausage.

Angelina catches the sausage and tosses it in with the potatoes. "My money says she's a tigress."

"Pussycat," counters Ginny.

"Tigress."

"Pussycat."

The steam of the kitchen has massed Hermione's hair to impressive levels of bushiness. She ties it up with a kitchen towel, bangs a few pots and pans around and ignores the escalating battle.

"Tigress!"

"Pussycat!"

"My 'ands are full, love," Molly rolls her eyeballs in the direction of her two Valkyries, and waddles out toward the picnic table with a ripe melon under each arm.

"Tigress."

"Pussycat."

"SHE'S A WOMAN, ALL RIGHT?" Hermione erupts. The bickering stops. Angelina and Ginny stare wide-eyed. Audrey yips and drops a handful of forks with a clatter. Fleur shrugs expressively. Cezar tosses the salad up behind his back, turns a quick pirouette and catches it in a wooden bowl.

Lily strolls through the kitchen door.

"Everyone except Uncle Ron is _insanely_ curious, Auntie," Lily says. "Rose won't talk about anything except what a great war hero Headmistress McGonagall is. Hugo says he's seen you snog." She fishes a sausage out of the potatoes, bites off one end, looks around and asks, "By the way—what's a _trilkop,_ and why is Grandmum chasing the fairies around the garden with a carving knife?

* * *

The table stretches dozens of yards through the center of the garden and is filled to bursting on either side with food and drink and people and, near George, things that shouldn't explode but do anyway. Arthur offers the opening toast. He raises his glass of butterbeer to the setting sun and says, "To family."

"To family!" Echo the assembled. For the Weasleys, it is a roar.

The women disappear immediately after the last tart is consumed. The men clear the table, store the leftovers and stack the pots and pans while the younger generation impatiently waits its turn at the dishes. Impatient, because as soon as the girls are done washing, they will leave the boys to dry while they sneak off and watch their sisters and mothers and grandmothers compete in The Match.

Minerva observes all of this. It is familiar, somehow. Perhaps it is the sheer volume of young people. She is accustomed to being surrounded by young people. Or perhaps it is simply the echo of Hogwarts' influence in the lives of all her students. She approves of the order and the disorder.

As so often happens when she becomes reflective (and she reflects that she often becomes so after the first half-bottle of decent Scotch), she remembers Dumbledore's voice. She hears him explaining the ideas of an American philosopher. What was the phrase? Unity in diversity?

That's it. Unity in diversity. A healthy system needs variation. A body needs all of its parts to thrive.

Alone at the long table now stripped of food, she glances up and sees a single figure standing on the far hill. His black shape blocks out the newborn stars.

The fairies mass, scatter, and re-form in a series of cursive letters. _Pendejo_.

* * *

"Bugger. Bugger bugger buggery bugger BUGGER!" The tall man's deep voice grumbles down the hillside and across the far valley. Minerva holds her skirts up above the dewy grass as she climbs the slope. At the plateau, she stops several meters away from the struggle.

Ron is waving his sausage in the face of a stubbornly resistant dragonling. About four feet tall at the haunches, green and gold, mouth stubbornly shut; it shakes its head and uses its clawed wings to slap at Ron's hands.

"Trouble?" Minerva asks.

Startled, he turns and scowls. "I've got it sorted," he replies and turns back to his task.

"I see." She continues to watch him. His posture tells her that he is aware of being watched and not liking it much. So much of Hugo in that long nose and lanky form. So much of Rose in the determined line of his mouth. So much of Hermione in the tone of his voice, the set of his shoulders, the tiny expressions that cross his face as he thinks.

Getting nowhere with his dragon, he turns back to Minerva and half-accuses, "Why aren't you down at the match, then?"

"Sounds dangerous," she answers.

"Big war hero like you ought to fit right in."

"Well." She looks at her scuffed leather boots, smiles thinly and moves toward him with slow steps. When she stops about one meter away, she looks up into his eyes and says, "You know what that's worth as well as I do."

Ron's sausage hangs limply at his side. Bits of congealed grease cling to his heather-colored trousers. The small dragon, temporarily forgotten, nibbles at his lead. "Hilda's gone off to be corrupted. You should go after and make sure she doesn't fly. She's in no fit state."

Minerva contemplates this. "When is she due?" She asks.

Ron's shoulders lift a bit. "December," he says. But as soon as he says it, his shoulders sag again and he turns away.

Minerva breathes the air deeply. She stretches out a hand, allows the dragon to sniff it, then gently strokes the large scales behind its ears. "Perhaps he's tired," she offers.

"Not bloody likely! Hasn't flown all day. Just sits on its scaly arse glaring at me. I can't even get it up in the air. Won't eat pizza. Won't eat mum's sausage. Charlie gave me a defective dragon."

Minerva eyes the sausage. "Gastrointestinal pyrotechnics are a bit of a cheat," she says. "I prefer the old-fashioned way."

She leads the small dragon some distance away, then returns to where Ron stands watching her. She places the string and spindle in his large left hand. He pulls it tight, but she catches the string and holds it slack. "Gently, Ronald. Where's your wand?"

He pulls it out of his waistband and holds it in his right hand.

"Now then, let's help this youngster fly, shall we? _Wingardium Leviosa_, please."

He flinches inwardly at a half-forgotten memory, then lifts his wand. "_Wingardium Leviosa_," he says. The dragon lifts off and floats about ten feet off the ground.

"The wind has gone," he complains.

"Mmm. Perhaps higher?" She suggests.

He increases the angle of his wand.

"Higher," she urges. "And to the left. Yes. Just there."

The dragon, alert now, flaps experimentally. Ron tightens his grip on the spindle. Minerva moves in front of him, stands with her back nearly touching his chest. He tries to take a step back, but she senses his intent and steps with him. One hand resting gently on the wrist that holds his wand, she says, "Drop the string and place your hand on my waist."

"Where?"

"My waist," she repeats.

She feels the tension in his limbs as he drops the kite string and curls a strong arm around her waist.

She uses her own wand to sever the string. His concentration falters. His wand sparks. The dragon jerks and begins to fall, bleating in fear, to the ground. Minerva moves her fingers over his and steadies his wand. He renews his concentration and catches the dragon mid-fall. Together, they gently move it back up into the sky until a slight updraft triggers its instinct to flap.

Minerva closes her eyes.

"Gently," she whispers. "Feel the pull of the wind? Feel it pull at your wand? Just move slowly in counterpoint. Pull back against it. That's right."

She releases her grip on his hand as he successfully counters the dragon's force. Suddenly, the dragon shoots fifteen feet straight up, wings fully extended and gliding. It gives a high squeal of pure pleasure and Ron breathes with it in a great, happy gulp.

"Excellent, Ronald," Minerva purrs. He tightens his hold on her waist and follows the dragon's sweeping path across the hilltop with his wand. She moves with him, turns as he turns, moves forward in time with his steps. Then she stops him, whispering, "Give it some room. Concentrate on sensing its movements through your wand."

He falters. She whispers. The dragon tries to pull away. She holds his hand while he finds the power to swing it around in a wide arc, over the roof of the Burrow, straight up into the sky, all the while using its own momentum to pull it back toward him. Long after she is sure that he has understood her, that he can handle it on his own, he keeps one arm around her waist. They breathe together. She can feel his lungs filling deep and slow as he relaxes into his task.

When she suggests he try closing his eyes, they go through the whole process again. Insects chirp. The temperature drops as the moon climbs higher into the night. There is shrieking and whooping in the far distance, but together they hear only the sound of great wings pushing against the sky, of three hearts beating.

* * *

George sits all alone on a chair in the garden. He's put the tables away, folded up the cloths, supervised the washing-up. He watches Minerva and Ron out on the hilltop just long enough to assure himself that it won't come to a duel. He smokes wizard tobacco from a long pipe. But mostly, he just sits and watches the fairy lights dance.

_Kliris glukh_

_Zalupa_

_Laewra aga_

_Lun tao_

He has considered visiting Trenton, New Jersey, but doesn't think of it as a real place so much as a state of mind. He believes the same thing of Beyond the Veil.

_Vilomenos_

_Pikhoved_

_She klistavo_

Mum firmly believes that the fairy lights are his most annoying and longest running prank.

_Lund nu mathu_

_Faszfej_

He knows that he has nothing to do with it.

_Minchiuni_

He suspects he knows who does.

* * *

Hermione hates this game.

She's none too keen on flying anyway, but the cushioning charm that enables her to fly naked is particularly tricky. The ceremonial ribbons and tethers adorning the family brooms do not help. Add to that the bludger sloshing about, the giggling chaos of her female family members as they swerve to deliberately intercept the bludger and the increasingly frustrated bloodlust of Angelina and Ginny, and the whole thing just winds the muscles in the back of her neck tight as a time-turner.

What sort of demented and thrice-damned tradition is this, anyway?

At least Minerva can't see her. She's probably off somewhere reconsidering her feelings for anyone who could participate in this sort of rubbish. She's probably gone home alre…

Or not.

Or, she might be stark naked; diving out of the moon at an impossible angle; dark hair unbound and whipping behind her; wand up and sparking ready; yards of shimmering cloth wound round her broom; blowing a piercing note from an official's whistle in order to be heard over the sudden great joyous hoots and ululations of the women, the girls standing guard in the surrounding bushes, and not a few of the local louts from Ottery St. Catchpole, who hide over the next ridge with their telescopes and spyglasses.

Hermione really, truly hates this game.

* * *

George glows. Ron considers his brother in this pre-dawn hour. He has fallen asleep in the garden again, his shape festively outlined by fairies clinging to him. Their lights blaze in an attempt to keep him warm in the chill morning air.

Ron reaches out a hand to his shoulder, feels the solid warmth of him always with some relief. Then he shakes until George's eyes flutter open.

"C'mon, then," Ron says, "It's time for everyone to go home."

"Here I am sleeping on the job again," George yawns and stretches as the fairies scatter.

"Yeah," Ron rumbles. "Look, I've been thinking about the thing with the squid, right?"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. We'll talk later."

* * *

"Babbling bumbling band of baboons."

"Right. Off you go."

Harry grins, rolls his eyes, and clutches his two tall, sleepy sons by the shoulders as he takes a long counterclockwise step into nothingness.

"Babbling bumbling band of baboons."

George hugs Ginny and pats Lily on the shoulder before they disappear with a _pop_.

"Babbling bumbling band of baboons!" Rose kisses her uncle George on the cheek before apparating a nearly catatonic Hugo back to McGonagall Manor.

George has to wait a long time while Hermione is hugged twice by everyone assembled. She smiles, kisses him on the cheek just the way Rose did, and whispers, "Babbling bumbling band of baboons," before disappearing with a loud crack.

George turns expectantly to Minerva, who shakes his hand after disentangling herself from Molly. She backs up to give herself some room.

"Hold on," George says, taking her elbow. "Nobody apparates without passing the sobriety test. Honestly, Headmistress, you should know better."

"What?" Minerva pauses mid-turn, her concentration broken. "Sobriety test? Don't be absurd. Stand aside."

"I won't." His merry eyes twinkle in a grave face. "If you can't pass the sobriety test, we'll send you by floo."

Minerva draws herself up to full height and harrumphs. If the buttons on her robes were not severely misaligned, she'd be intimidating.

"Babbling bumbling band of baboons," George patiently reminds her.

"Who would say such a thing?"

George smiles. "You'd be surprised. Just try."

"Oh, very well," Minerva purses her lips and squares her shoulders. "Bambling bubbling panda dubloons!"

"Erm, not quite," George tells her. Angelina has arrived with his purple traveling cloak and matching mokeskin gloves.

"This is perfectly ridiculous," Minerva says.

"Actually, they're quite comfortable. Try again," George suggests. Minerva moves her gaze worriedly around the room. A smallish crowd has gathered in the parlor. Have they all come to watch her make a drunken fool of herself?

"You're holding up the line, Minerva," George warns.

"Bubbling pimpling bimbo pontoons!" Minerva spits. She closes her eyes. Her face goes the color of George's cloak. Molly and Arthur and Hilda and Angelina and Percy and Audrey study their own shoes.

Suddenly, a hand slides into hers. She twirls round too quickly, stumbles, and finds Ron reaching out with both hands to steady her. "C'mon, Moggy. Let's go for a walk," he says, and quickly pulls her out the door into the overgrown front garden. He whisks her through the gate to the little gravel lane that runs beside the Burrow.

"Where are we going?" She asks, breathless from keeping up, "Where are you taking me?"

"Home," he says, stopping suddenly enough that she runs into him.

He puts one hand on her waist, holds the other in his, lifts it and steps toward her. Then sideways. Then backwards. Then toward her again.

"One-two-three and one-two-three and…" _Whoosh!_ They turn abruptly. Minerva feels her stomach slosh around like the women's makeshift bludger and then _Whump! _They are in the great hall of McGonagall manor. Ron maneuvers her through an arched doorway and into a nearby chair at about the same time Hermione comes rushing back down the staircase that leads to the children's rooms.

"Is she all right?" Hermione asks. Her face is drawn and ashen as she moves quickly toward them.

"I'm fine!" Minerva asserts, standing up just a tad too quickly and swaying into Hermione.

"Long day," Ron says, shuffling his big feet.

Hermione holds up Minerva and stares at her ex-husband. Ron wipes his nose on the back of his sleeve.

"Thanks, Ron," she says.

One corner of his lips turn up in acknowledgment. "No problem," he says. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight," Hermione manages. He is gone by the time she finishes the word. "One big happy family," she grumbles.

"Getting there," Minerva replies, finally gives in to the overwhelming dizziness, and falls heavily into Hermione's arms.


	15. Squid Interlude

Dear Ginny,

Yes, I do know that your annoying curiosity about my personal life is actually concern for my well-being. On the other hand, on some level, you really just want gossip about the sex life of your favorite professor.

Beast.

Minerva is an enigma. Even as I lie here beside her, she eludes me. I might tell you how she tastes, or how she mumbles in her sleep, or the tune she hums making morning tea, or any number of things, really, but she would remain ultimately unfathomable. She's a hydra. Every answer she gives (and she gives many) leads to two more questions.

Isn't that delicious? Am I not the luckiest girl ever? I am in love with the Sphinx.

* * *

Minerva rolls over and blinks awake at the candle burning on Hermione's bed table. When her eyes focus, she sees that Hermione is writing something on a small, note-sized sheet of parchment.

"What are you writing?" She asks.

Hermione looks over and smiles. "A letter."

"To whom?"

"Ginny."

"About what?" Minerva asks. Then she grimaces. It's none of her business, obviously. When did she get so clingy? How is it that she can no longer abide the thought of distance?

"About how you taste," Hermione replies. The smile playing at her lips is wicked.

Minerva blinks. The lines of her mouth form the word _oh_, but she makes no sound. "And how do I taste?" She finally asks.

Hermione brushes the feather of the quill against her lips and ponders. Minerva rearranges the pillow and bedclothes so that she's fully on her side and waiting for an answer.

"Smoky," Hermione answers. Her brows knit adorably in concentration. "Sometimes bitter, but usually mild. Milky, in a way. Salty."

Minerva curls one arm up under her head. "You aren't really writing that," she says.

* * *

Where were we, Gin? Ah. By now, Hugo has told you all about the Squid Incident. Odd, how after all these years, I still recognize the sound of Hagrid's blubbering. He appeared on the doorstep at dawn; quite disheveled (more than usual, if you can imagine it) and sobbing into his great handkerchief.

It took Minerva, Flora and myself several minutes and half a bottle of whiskey to get him calm enough to talk sensibly. By then, the children were awake and we were all gathered in the kitchen. Hagrid opened his mokeskin sack and turned it inside out. When he did, it smelled like the docks in London. Worse, even, than the fish market.

Minerva's eyes went wide when she saw the empty mokeskin.

"Gone, I tell you!" Hagrid was wailing, "Talked to the merpeople meself. Nowhere. Not a tentacle anywhere!"

"Don't be silly, Hagrid," Minerva jumped up and paced around the table, "Spot cannot have simply disappeared."

Suddenly, Hugo was wide awake and all ears. "Spot? Who's Spot?"

When I finally got everyone calmed down and speaking coherently again, it came out that Spot is the giant squid. It has been Minerva's since she rescued it from Tom Riddle. In her prefect days, Minerva found Tom (She calls him Tom. Always. Is this a tidbit that interests you?) performing experimental spells on the poor creature. It had been just a tiny thing. Tom found a way to toughen its skin, make it faster and stronger and more able to defend itself. That's why it can live in fresh water. He even found a way to make it resist the cruciatus curse. You can imagine what torture this was for the poor little squid.

Minerva took Spot home, here, to the loch. It eventually grew so large that it began to attract muggle attention. That's why it lives most of the year at Hogwarts. It only comes home for part of the summer holidays in order to keep it from eating all the fish in Hogwarts' lake. (Squid eat when they are warmest. This fun fact comes to you courtesy of my son. But then, you probably already know that. That, and much, much more.)

Speaking of, you can imagine how Hugo reacted to this news. He bounced off the kitchen walls shouting, "Ours! Ours! The squid is ours!"

Rose, bless her heart, took immediate action. She put a bowl of porridge in front of her brother. Things quieted considerably after he shoved the first spoonful in his mouth.

(When did my little girl grow up into that amazing young woman? I feel old and exultant and proud and bereft all at the same time. Let her show you what she can do with side-along apparition!)

Where was I? Oh, yes. Hagrid pulled some bits of bright paper out of his pocket. He spread them across the table. "Tha's all I found," he said, "Jus' some sweet wrappers and two pairs of fresh footprints."

I recognized those Lindor chocolates as quickly as you did, no doubt, when Rose and Hugo showed them to you. Ron never could resist a chocolate anything. Especially a Swiss chocolate anything.

I think Rose had it sorted by then, too. Too smart by half, that one.

After that, it was just a matter of planting the seeds. When Hugo had finished his first bowl of porridge, I asked him, "Hugo, if you were going to kidnap a giant squid, what's the first thing you'd do?"

He ticked through all the possibilities as they occurred to him. Get a net. A mokeskin sack. No, a mokeskin glove, so there'd be room for the tentacles. An extra-jumbo serving of chips. Finally, his eyes lit up and he announced, "No. Not first. First thing, I'd call Uncle George."

I had taken Minerva's hand under the table in order to calm her.

"Sure," Hagrid said, "George'd be handy wi' a job li' that."

Minerva was breathing easier. "Indeed," was all she said.

By the time it became clear that both George and Ron were missing, I had the kids' things all packed up. That's when I contacted Harry on the floo. You know the rest.

Anyway, I hope you are enjoying your Alpine holiday. Minerva and I are certainly enjoying our time alone. Love to Harry and Lily and the boys. Say hello to George and Ron for me when you find them. Beat the kids if they deserve it.

In answer to your questions about the deep, dark secrets of Minerva McGonagall: she loves her squid.

Yours,

Hermione


	16. Book Learning

Hermione trembles before the great bookcases in the library of McGonagall Manor. Walls of books and scrolls soar three stories high. Animated ladders fidget in the corners, waiting to scoot into service should she need a book stored on the highest shelves. Light comes streaming in through clerestory windows. These windows aren't visible from the outside. Hermione hopes they are a magical illusion. She worries about Minerva risking her sacred volumes to degradation by ultraviolet light, even the weak kind reflected off the loch at this northern latitude.

Hermione often feigns disinterest in the library. She's afraid that if she truly indulges her passion for it, Minerva will suspect that Hermione loves her only for her books.

But the library is only the second most exciting feature of McGonagall Manor. Its mistress is the first.

The moon will be full tonight. Tides are high on the loch. Hermione shivers, hugs herself, grins in anticipation of the tides that have been building up inside her all week. No, it must be clear to Minerva how intensely Hermione wants her. The books, it must be obvious, are just an incredible bonus.

Hermione is barefoot. Her jeans are hopelessly old-fashioned and faded. The off-white lightweight robe she wears falls to mid-calf, the top three buttons undone, sleeves rolled up to the elbow. Her arms are strong and tanned from working with Minerva in the garden. Her hair falls dark gold in unruly curls down to the middle of her back. She glides silently about the room.

Minerva has fallen asleep on the overstuffed reading divan. Hermione doesn't want to wake her.

The book Minerva was reading, _Shivernad Snorkel's Ridiculously Thorough Survey of Alpine Lakes_, lies open beside her. Hermione carefully lifts the book in order to replace the bookmark.

She turns the bookmark over in her hands and sees that it is a scrap of parchment torn from a large sheet. The writing on it is in Hugo's childish scrawl. Glancing to make sure that Minerva is still sleeping, Hermione reads:

Things Minnie Is Older Than

1. Pez candy

2. Television

3. Aeresol cans

4. Bubble gum

5. The yo-yo

6. Scotch tape

7. Parking meters

8. Canned beer

9. Ballpoint pens

10. McDonalds

Under this list, Minerva has added in her own neat, square letters:

11. Sugar Quills

12. Time Turners

13. Tom Riddle

14. Cleansweep Brooms

15._ Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_

16. Aragog

17_. A History of Magic_

18. You, snooping woman, and don't you forget it!

Hermione has the good sense to blush as she replaces the bookmark. She puts the book on a side table and turns her head slightly to find her lover's eyes open and intensely focused upon her.

"Lovely nap?" Hermione asks.

Minerva spreads her arms wide. "Come here," she says, "I want to feel your weight on me."

* * *

The divan is wide and soft. Minerva is thin and tough. They sink lower into the cushions as Hermione carefully settles herself. She feels Minerva's legs spread and wrap around her hips in welcome. Arms pull her close. Hermione wants to charm her bushy curls up and out of the way so she can spend a good long time kissing Minerva's lovely mouth, but for now her face is tucked into the soft flesh of Minerva's neck, chin, shoulder. Hermione cannot help but open her mouth, trailing kisses all along the jawline, stopping to lick the fluttering pulse and nip at the bit of exposed shoulder. The woman smells of ginger and spices. She tastes of salt and a faintly floral, bitter soap. Hermione breathes in and never wants to stop, wants to fill her lungs to bursting with the compelling scent of this body. Only the dust of the library makes her stop. A small sneeze is followed by a giggle and Minerva pats her bottom with one hand while squeezing her tightly with the other.

Lips meet under a tent of cascading curls. Minerva's fingers work their way through Hermione's hair. They tug and press and massage behind the ears while Hermione slowly, ever so slowly, savors each delicious millimeter of Minerva's lower lip. Hermione feels the body under her relax in some ways and tense up in others. Breathing both deepens and quickens. Soon, hips are moving in rhythm with tongues. No thrusting or probing, they find a deep satisfaction in the simple meeting of pressure with pressure, of exploring texture and friction. Hermione is aware that she is moaning into Minerva's mouth and that Minerva answers her in a cry that is almost a whine. The push of Minerva's hips lifts them both momentarily off the soft cushions.

The kiss is broken. "Wand," Minerva husks. Hermione slips her hands into the pockets of Minerva's robe and hands it to her. She watches, rapt, as Minerva's lips quiver slightly in an unvoiced spell. Then the divan is a wide, padded bed covered in cushions. They are at the center of the library. Shafts of sunlight stream in from high above them, from somewhere immediately under a shining dome held aloft by massive columns of leatherbound books.

All their clothing has simultaneously jumped two feet to the left and fallen to the floor in a jumbled pile.

In Hermione's mind is a fragment of an image. She sees Minerva in a cathedral somehow reminiscent of this room. She hears Minerva telling a faceless man that she wants to fuck him right on the altar. Except now--as Hermione moves herself carefully off her lover so she might see the long, lovely body gloriously open before her—now Minerva _is_ the altar.

Escaping wisps of black and silver hair frame her face. Tufts of silver hair frame the incandescent pink juncture of her thighs. Slender ankles move restlessly on either side of Hermione's knees. Minerva waits. Watches. Inscrutable and catlike. Impatient and amused. Trembling and aroused. Ragged intake of breath and thrust of chin. Bravada? Challenge?

Hermione's lips curl into a slow smile. She inhales once more, deeply, and growls at the womanly scent that fills her. She strokes a silky thigh, turns her head to kiss a bent knee. When Minerva reaches up to brush curls away from Hermione's forehead, Hermione catches the hand. She kisses the palm. She playfully sucks each fingertip. Then she places Minerva's long fingers down among the silver tufts, trails the fingertips lightly along a swelling ridge of pink.

"Show me," she says.

* * *

In 2013, Hermione Granger-Weasley figured out how to free the house elves. The problem had not been with the Ministry of Magic. It was with the elves. When approached with the proposal that they accept clothing within two years, elf representatives readily agreed to emancipation (if that was what the masters really and truly wanted), but negotiated the timetable down to ten years with an indefinite option to extend.

The answer came to her while riding the London underground. It had been her turn to take Arthur for his annual birthday ride. She sat beside him, hands clasped with his as he struggled to suppress the gigantic excited grin he habitually wore on the ride. He was not successful in this effort. He had at least remembered not to shout, "Wheee!" when the train started moving. She was trying to decide whether to buy him a huge order of greasy chips or take him out for ice cream when her attention was caught by her fellow passengers. Each one seemed to be covered in advertising logos for goods or services. Each one seemed desperate to associate himself with some carefully cultivated and relentlessly promoted corporate image.

"People will wear anything on a tee-shirt these days," she mumbled. Then it hit her. _Of course. So simple._

_

* * *

  
_

Which is why Flora now sits in the McGonagall kitchen wearing a long green and red tartan shirt emblazoned with the McGonagall family crest on one side and the words, "Flora's mistress is the bravest person who ever lived," printed on the other. It should have the stylized outline of a feline and the word, "Courage," printed on the other side, but Flora does not believe that image makes the point plainly enough. Even though, Flora muses, the original image does have a powerful effect on folks. Many's the time she's worn it walking down Daigon Alley only to see grown men and women read the shirt, stop dead in their tracks, straighten their shoulders, set their jaws and stride purposefully off—sometimes in an entirely different direction than the one in which they were originally traveling.

Flora is proud to wear the McGonagall shirt when she goes off to visit her Smoot. She likes hers quite the best of any clothing she's ever seen, especially those silly ostentatious things worn by all the Malfoy elves with a bright white peacock feather swooshing across a dark green background, the word, "Supernus," embroidered over the breast.

Meh.

As she waits, Flora plays with the words on her shirt. Perhaps it should say, "Flora's mistress has not quite mastered a silencing spell powerful enough to keep her house elf from hearing what she gets up to in private."

Or, "Mistress Minerva is sufficiently vigorous to shag Mistress Hermione all afternoon and right through tea-time!"

It is this last part that has Flora fretting. First of all, it simply isn't right to skip tea. She's heard of those modern wizards who work right through teatime, but Flora's having none of that in her family, by boots! The proprieties will be observed.

_Bam!_

She jumps in alarm before she realizes that the loud crash she just heard was her own fist pounding the tabletop. She pats the table in silent apology.

Proprieties aside, Flora has a date. Smoot will be waiting for her in the old treehouse (with a stuffed pipe and a bottle of cold butterbeer) right after he serves tea to his own family. Flora strokes her chin, which sports a fairly impressive display of whiskers groomed into a flattering goatee. Sure, it isn't the full muttonchops of Mathilde down the road, but Smoot isn't one to fall for anything so frowsy and obvious anyway. He's an elf with taste, he is.

And if mistress Minerva doesn't stop that yipping and order tea soon, Flora will miss an entire evening of lovely, snuffly treetop snogging.

Almost as soon as she wishes it, the yipping subsides. It is replaced by rustling and tussling and breathless whispers. Flora senses an opening. Without Minerva to specify what sort of dainty she'd like, Flora has filled the platter with all the most likely choices. The mound of food--the size and shape of a small ottoman--entirely obscures the teapot. With a twitch of her whiskers, she transports it to a side table she knows sits next to the reading divan in the library. Her effort is rewarded with the sound of a violent crash and peals of hysterical laughter.

Satisfied, Flora pops off to meet her man.

* * *

"Satisfied?" Minerva asks. She brushes bread crumbs from Hermione's breasts.

"Mmm," Hermione answers while sucking sticky bits of something from her fingers. A serious dent has been made in the mountain of food. The teapot has been repaired and emptied. Fortified, the two women lay tangled in one another.

"Your curiosity is one of your finer qualities, you know," Minerva says. She arranges a coverlet over their rapidly cooling bodies.

"Is it?"

"I think so," Minerva smiles at her and nods decisively.

"Right then…" Hermione begins.

"Uh-oh."

"…there is something I'm longing to know."

Minerva gathers the coverlet up under her arms and braces herself against the cushions. "I thought there might be," she says crisply.

Hermione studies her lover's face and considers the process of lovemaking. The teasing out. The opening up. The giving over entirely of oneself to another. The shattering. The gathering of pieces. The reassembly. Something is always changed in the cataclysm. There is always a small transformation. _This is growth_, Hermione thinks. _In the right hands_.

Hermione pulls Minerva to her, cradles her head, tenderly kisses her pretty face. Her lips stay close enough to brush against Minerva's temple when she speaks.

"How did you go from being the girl in that confessional to the woman in my arms?" Hermione whispers.

Hermione feels, rather than hears, Minerva's deep chuckle. "Is that all?" She rumbles. Then, to Hermione's patient silence, she sighs and says, "You might say all it took was a few good men."


	17. Surprise Me

A/N: Thank you for waiting. Thank you for the kind and helpful comments. This story has an ending. I promise to keep writing until I get to it.

* * *

At The Bookstore

"Surprise me," Minerva said.

Hermione has not achieved middle age—indeed, has not survived adolescence—without knowing her own worth.

True, sex confuses her. Minerva unnerves her. Rose and Hugo try her considerable patience. Mysteries overwhelm her common sense. But, in spite of her unrelentingly steep learning curve in those areas, she has a firm grasp of her own power and the value she brings to the table. Any table.

Minerva's table.

_I am reasonably attractive_, she tells herself. _Despite the age difference, Minerva and I have much in common_, _both in temperament and experience_. _I adore her, and that has its own seductive power. The fact that I feel the need to make this list is in no way indicative of insecurity on my part. Nope. Not a bit._

She sips her spicy chai and sighs. The narrator in her head points up the linguistic absurdity of this. She giggles. The chai overruns the paper cup, scalds her fingers, threatens to drip as she performs the complicated maneuver of transferring the cup to her dry hand while she searches her own clothing for an approximately chai-colored place to wipe her fingers. Once done, she softly thumps her forehead against the cool spines of books. Since these are Muggle books, they do not thump back. Hermione is grateful.

Books line the shelves on both sides of a long, shadowy aisle. And a long, shadowy aisle of outraged books is not something Hermione is prepared to face this afternoon.

In the Muggle tabloid folded under Hermione's right arm, there is a story about suspicious goings-on at a large Swiss lake. Accompanying the story are photographs. One photograph shows a thin, redhaired man in a full thermal wetsuit. He is waterskiing behind what is clearly an enormous, squid-like appendage. Hermione will explain to Minerva that in the computer age, Muggles never believe what they see in photos. Minerva will be relieved.

Relieved, but not surprised. What could possibly surprise a nonagenarian schoolteacher? Certainly not a book, or the gift of a book.

Hermione pauses in the romance section. Would Minerva expect to be given three hundred pages about the surprisingly intelligent inner-city savage who rips the clothing from the nubile body of a young social worker? Would she expect both parties to be male? Could males be nubile? Would Minerva be surprised that so many young women derive pleasure from reading erotic literature that features pretty gay boys?

Surprised? Maybe. Interested? Not much.

Perhaps the gardening philosophies of Vita Sackville West? Don't be daft. Minerva probably _dated_ Vita Sackville West.

* * *

Three Weeks Earlier

Hermione leans in against the library ladder. It trembles beneath her. She closes her eyes and opens her other senses. There is something—distinct—about a McGonagall enchantment. Over the years, Hermione has learned to recognize Minerva's work.

_Particularly because this is Minerva's ladder in Minerva's library in Minerva's home_, Hermione muses. She throws her arms around the ladder and rests her cheek against its warm, worn wood. The slight tremble becomes an audible purr. It is unseemly, she tells herself, to become sexually excited by library furniture.

Minerva will spend the day apparating around Britain while Hermione is left alone. Minerva will visit the homes of many confused Muggle parents. Hermione will jump headlong into the more cerebral delights of her lover's private library. She's lost track of how long she's been at it. Minutes. Hours. History. Research. The survey of enchanted erotic literature was particularly spellbinding.

She steps onto the lowermost rung of the ladder.

"Surprise me," she says. It quivers for just a second, long enough for Hermione to brace herself. Then the ladder flings itself into a hard right, travels along the curved rail for about twenty feet, jerks to a stop and leaps straight up to the library's first landing. It moves swiftly right again, about fifteen feet this time. It is less difficult than riding the Whomping Willow in high dudgeon, but Hermione's hair does fly behind her as she clings to the ladder. Her knuckles are white against the dark background of books rushing past.

_I will not say. "Wheee!" _She tells herself, then does anyway.

When the ladder stops, it is in the music section. Specifically, it is in the section of Minerva's library dedicated to the collected works of Lord Elton. There are far more recordings assembled here than might ever be found in the music shop. She runs her fingers along the spines and selects a familiar one. Ah. Of course. They'd all gone out to see _Parry Hotter and the Rock of Ages_ during its first run in the West End. First, they'd gotten good and properly pissed. Then, they'd gotten good and properly tossed out of the second act when she'd had to physically restrain Harry from repeatedly charming the clothes back on to the male leads as they snogged onstage.

Hermione still doesn't know how the show ends. Pity, that.

And what, exactly, is supposed to be surprising about the collected works of an ancient squib? It isn't as if he's not perfectly obvious. That he is a McGonagall on his mother's side is slightly less well known, although Hermione supposes Minerva may have something to do with that.

"Ouch!" Hermione says.

She says it because a small leather-bound box has flown off the shelf next to the recordings and has commenced bashing her upside the head. She flails around with her free arm, trying to smack it away, but the box is persistent. It feints right and attacks to the left. It hovers just out of reach and darts in for an unexpected run at her bottom. After a few moments of futile self-defense, Hermione changes her strategy. Quidditch is not her strength. She is a scientist. Or a barrister. Or a diplomat. Or something.

Open-handed, she reaches out to take hold of the box. It does not resist.

Back on solid ground, Hermione finds that the box contains dozens, perhaps hundreds, of hand-written letters. They have been miniaturized and compressed into the box. "Zippoioioios!" She commands, careful to pronounce all the syllables. Whoever developed this particular spell has more modern sensibility than sense, in Hermione's opinion. The topmost letters become full-sized at the touch of her wand.

She unfolds the first. The parchment is new. It still smells of ink. And exotic spices. The postmark is in a language Hermione does not recognize. The writing is clear and black and bold. Masculine. Hermione reads:

_Darling Moggy,_

_Your life and the things in it are yours to arrange exactly as you please. I relinquished all claim the day I left. Send your parchment. An ye harm none, do as ye will._

_Love,_

_Boban_

The letter was mailed three weeks ago. Immediately, Hermione reads the one below it:

_Darling Moggy,_

_I understand completely the need for discretion. The past will stay there._

_I would tell you how beautifully the river dolphins sing, but I have given up all hope of luring you out of your beloved, mad castle._

_Love,_

_Boban_

Hermione takes the next one in her hand. Unfolding it, she sees the same bold script and the same salutation.

_Darling Moggy,_

_The ground here is bare and rocky and as red as new blood. Remember what I told you about the northern fjords? I've just been trekking through terrain that makes them look as simple as Salisbury Plain. The rocks are slippery and sinewy and treacherous. I'm thinking that the routes in and out are protected with a variation of the staircase spells. Without my guide, I'd be at it still._

_I wish you'd find a month to spend here among these wizards. They've not much use for arithmancy or charms, but every child masters his animagus form just out of infancy. You'd have to see it for yourself. I've just seen a girl not yet three years old burst into bloom—as a thorny cactus! Now, do you suppose that would be an animagus or a vegimagus?_

_The key thing, I believe, is…_

Whatever else it has to say is lost to Hermione, because at that moment, Minerva enters. Talking.

"I cannot decide if this is easier or more difficult than it used to be," she says. "That silly theatrical has put no end of odd ideas into Muggles' heads." She strides purposefully into the library. "Nude Dueling!" She hoots. There is a satchel of paperwork slung over her shoulder and she lays it aside on the repaired table. She is still dressed in full Hogwarts regalia, emerald green and velvet from head to foot.

Minerva stops. She looks at the box of letters.

She looks at Hermione.

"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing," she mutters. The clipped disapproval of her tone and the set of her lips are so characteristically Minerva that Hermione's heart stops beating, just a little.

Enchanted sunshine streams through the clerestory windows. There is a scuffling of anticipation as the library ladders sense their mistress' return. Hermione vacillates between confusion and humiliation, flirts with jealousy, lingers rather too long at sheer panic, and finally settles at utter blessed shock.

Minerva inclines her head slightly to the left and says, "Well?"

There is a longish silence.

"I've…I've…I've read all about trolls and thought I could handle it myself?" Hermione blurts.

There is a longish, uncomfortable silence.

_Minerva and the Eyebrow of Doom_, Hermione thinks, _would make a brilliant name for a rock band._

"I've not had my tea," Minerva says.

Hermione momentarily has a vision of the slackening sails of a tall ship on a suddenly becalmed sea. She watches in befuddlement as Minerva removes one roll of parchment from the leather satchel. It is tied in a ribbon of green McGonagall tartan. Minerva places it conspicuously on the seat of an upholstered chair midway between the two women, and exits as inconspicuously as Minerva McGonagall can manage.

"I am really _not_ the most intelligent person in this relationship, am I?" Hermione asks the ladders. Their answer, unless Hermione is imagining things, is to go on kvelling in the corner.

* * *

The Wine Cellar, Yesterday

He is beautiful.

Long-limbed, broad-shouldered and possessed of a great mop of silver hair, from a distance Magnus McGonagall is a moving mountain. Up close, the bones of his face are as delicate and refined as those of his daughter. More than a century of life has etched itself into the flesh around his green eyes. He smells of the sea. And strong wine.

The pinotage he pours into Hermione's empty glass is a dark red. So is Hermione's face as his laughter echoes off the stone walls of this cellar. High up in the stone walls, there may be windows. The centuries of cobwebs that filter the South African sun vibrate in sympathy with the sound.

Hermione is drunk. She is drunk, happy, embarrassed and hopelessly in love with her lover's father. Even if he does not appear to speak any English.

"Cock the wee finger," he roars. Hermione takes another sip of the delicious wine. He smiles at her, swings an arm around and musses her terminally frizzy hair with a great paw. "Soo you've captured mah Moggy, have ye? Fa woods hae imagined?"

When he moves, the ancient wooden bench beneath him groans. Hermione eyes the brick arches holding up the roof and calculates her chances of survival if this man really erupts. How many tectonic plates meet up in Stellenbosch?

"Ye dornt ken the trouble yoo've gart. An ye buzzin around loch a bae n'er bonnit! It's nae faerlie she wants ye, mair ur less, eh?"

His eyes narrow as he stills, watching her. Several things occur to Hermione. One is that this is the particular tingle that tells the dik-dik when the leopard is watching her. Two is that she is much more drunk than Magnus McGonagall. Three is that her mission to recruit him to the International Wizengamot is doomed to fail. Four is—four is slightly higher than she is presently able to count.

No, wait. Four is that she'd better have him sign the parchment soon, before she passes out. "I'd better have you sign this before I pass out," she says. She slips the rolled parchment out of her traveler's bag and hands it to him. He takes it soberly, unties the green tartan ribbon, and spreads it out before him. Eyeglasses materialize upon his face as he scans the words. He nods. When he is done, his gaze returns to Hermione. She meets it as determinedly as she can. "You are certain?" She asks. "I will not do this otherwise, no matter what she says."

He smiles again.

"Aye," he answers. When he returns the parchment to her hands, his name has been magically—and permanently—affixed to the bottom. "She's a sensible hen, mah Minerva. Dornt fash yerse," he pauses, drains his glass of wine and places it, upended, upon the wood. Then he leans in on the table, both palms bearing down on thick oak, bending the wooden plank beneath his great weight. "As tae th'job," he says, "Tak't yerself."

Then he extricates himself from the grateful bench. It sighs with relief. Hermione notes, as he exits, that he is precisely as inconspicuous as his daughter.

She blearily reads over the document that makes her an heiress to McGonagall Manor and all of its subsidiary properties. Then she rolls it up in a brisk and businesslike manner. If she looks at it more, she'll blubber.

* * *

Back in the Bookstore

Right. The job. Hermione sips the last of the cooled chai.

When she relays her failure to recruit Magnus for the position, the Ministry does, in fact, offer it to her.

Minerva has given her copies of all of the letters Magnus McGonagall has written to his daughter during more than seventy restless years of wandering. There are hundreds more than the ones Hermione read on that first surprising day.

While Minerva is a compulsive teacher, Magnus is a natural student. His letters detail more about the magical world than any other source Hermione has ever encountered. India. Japan. Paraguay. Antarctica. New Jersey. With them--and him--as a resource, she could serve as the British wizarding community's Secretary of State. She could protect a small, war-weakened civilization from the ambitious and the opportunistic. There is no one else with her experience, her resources, her ease in both the wizarding and Muggle worlds. It is probably the position she has been training her entire life for.

It would mean travel. It would mean seeing even less of Minerva--almost nothing, in fact. Since the Grindelwald War, Minerva has spent most of her life locked behind high, secure walls. First, she immersed herself in the Department of Mysteries. She only left it to become the cornerstone of Hogwarts.

She is at once an irresistible and enduring mystery, and a spinster schoolteacher so sheltered that Hermione can surprise her simply by picking up _A Brief History of Time_ from the Barnes and Noble discount shelf.

_What does she see in me, indeed?_ Hermione thinks. _Exotic creature that I am._

* * *

Home

It is late at night when she brushes the soot from her traveling clothes. McGonagall Manor is dark and quiet as Flora takes her outer robe, hands her a plate of toast and some tea, then sleepily shoos her off to bed.

Thin arms reach out to hold her as she slips between the covers. Hermione holds Minerva as tightly as she dares. She is careful not to trap the silver braid in her embrace. Her lover is warm, soft, just barely this side of sleep. She smells of ginger newts and lavender soap. Her sighs try to form themselves into words as Hermione cradles her in her arms.

"Wha' d'ye bring me, lass?" Minerva yawns against her shoulder.

Tomorrow, she will ask this woman to leave behind everything she has ever known or valued. Tonight, she brushes her lips against the overwhelming softness of the flesh at Minerva's eyelids.

"Nothing but trouble," Hermione whispers.


	18. The Bombay Chest

A/N: Gentle Readers, please meet The Holdup. I'll never be happy with it, so I'm just going to toss it out there and move on.

Disclaimer: It's Jo's world. We just live in it.

* * *

Hermione wakes, finally, to find Minerva sitting up in bed beside her, square spectacles perched on her nose, and the _Daily Prophet_ opened to the editorial pages. A white summer nightdress is worn untied at the neck, but the ruffled sleeves harbor tell-tale crumbs.

A tea tray with scones and raspberry jam rests on the little Bombay chest that acts as a bedside table. The gift Hermione left for Minerva sits there as well, still wrapped in maroonish corporate paper.

"Are you not even curious about what I brought you?" Hermione asks. Her voice is thick with sleep.

Minerva rattles her paper and peers at Hermione over the tops of the spectacles. "Some of us," she says, "Have self-discipline."

* * *

Minerva's white summer nightdress hangs from the Bombay chest. Arms akimbo, knees bent and splayed, she gasps to catch her breath as telltale drops of sweat gather at the juncture of her thighs. The salt-and-pepper hairs there slowly contract and curl like the new fronds of a tender fern. The firm, slow pressure of Hermione's fingers inside her—filling her, twisting, moving away and then sliding back in—is maddening. "Please," she begs. Her fists fill themselves with Hermione's thick curls. There is nothing gentle in the way she pushes her hips up to be met by a laughing mouth. "Please…"

* * *

The shreds of maroonish corporate gift wrap rest on, or near, the bedside table. Summer nightgowns are abandoned altogether. Hermione wolfs down a sweet scone while Minerva scans the jacket cover of a book.

"_A Brief History of Time_," Minerva reads aloud. Not for the first time, Hermione wonders at Minerva's gift for making everything she says sound significant. It is almost as if she hides extra syllables among the audible ones, the way 12 Grimmauld Place is hidden among more visible houses.

Minerva pauses after reading the title. Hermione senses a question in the silence.

"I have a theory, you see," Hermione says. She takes a great gulp of tea because the scone, with its mountain of jam, is sticking to the roof of her mouth.

"Indeed?"

"Yes. Three, actually. The first one is that you helped to develop time-turner technology when you worked at the Department of Mysteries." Hermione crosses her arms and leans triumphantly back upon her pillows.

"Interesting," Minerva allows. "And what leads you to believe that I have been Unspeakable?"

"Diplomatic privilege," Hermione meets Minerva's cool expression with one of her own. "I looked it up."

The beginning of a scowl appears at the corners of Minerva's still-swollen mouth. She drops the hardcover into her lap and snorts. "Great _gods_, you are a nosey git."

* * *

Creeping buttercups are piled upon the Bombay chest as it waddles on impossibly dainty feet among the garden rows. Minerva leads, barefoot, wand out, worn quidditch trousers rolled to mid-calf, and shirtsleeves folded up around her elbows. Silently, mistress and bedside table stalk the pernicious weed that edges its way around the blackcurrant.

Hermione trails in their wake. She stuns panicked garden gnomes as they scurry for cover.

"I was merely a secretary," Minerva says. She unbends from hunting crouch to full height when a particularly wily patch of buttercup eludes her wand.

Hermione notes that the sun is freckling her own shoulders, exposed in a sleeveless singlet. She waves her wand at a bit of dried straw and conjures a hat for Minerva's head.

"That's what they all say," Hermione argues. Minerva accepts the hat without comment. "But it doesn't make sense that the Ministry of Magic would loan you anything as potentially disastrous as a time-turner, certainly not one to be used by a child, unless you had both a mastery of the subject and a great deal of influence over those who make the decisions."

Minerva says nothing. She turns away from Hermione and marches up the hedgerow toward a gathering of cabbages that are threatening to bolt in the full summer sun. When Hermione catches up with her, she is putting the final touches on a shading spell. Hermione wraps her arms around Minerva from behind. The spot between her bony shoulder blades is damp. Hermione rests her cheek there. The shade created by the brim of the hat feels cool on her face.

Once again, Hermione tries to remember what that day was like.

It is all so long ago. She had recently sprouted breasts and found them bloody uncomfortable. Minerva was scary and interesting and someone to be pleased. Harry was a sweet problem. Ron was a silly git. The time turner was a fascinating puzzle. The rest is jumbled and sepia-toned in Hermione's imagination.

Hermione has often imagined what it might be like to fall in love with the adult version of a child one has nurtured. The thought disturbs her. There are issues of power and of trust. On the other hand, if Minerva cannot love anyone she has taught, her pool of potential mates becomes exceedingly shallow. No amount of cajoling on Hermione's part can induce Minerva to address the topic. It seems she cannot even abide being reminded.

"You have a lovely gift for compartmentalization," Hermione whispers.

A bump on the thigh tells her that the Bombay chest has caught up with them. Hermione releases Minerva and takes a step backward toward the nearly non-existent noonday shade of the hedgerow. Minerva turns to look at her. "Humph," she says, notices the table, and gives it a loving pat before striding off in another direction entirely.

* * *

Hagrid lies sprawled over the Bombay chest. Concentrating on getting a giant freshwater squid out of a little mokeskin sack and into a heavily traveled highland loch, he has failed to see the Bombay chest as it waddles up to join Minerva, Hermione, and Hugo, who are gathered at the shore. A sudden turn, and his big boot gets tangled.

"Oomph," Hagrid says.

Fortunately, the little bedside table is a sturdy piece of furniture. It barely whimpers as it struggles, unsuccessfully, to right itself.

"Sorry 'bout tha'," says Hagrid.

"Are you hurt?" Asks Hermione.

"Oh, dear," says Minerva.

"Lunch!" Says Hugo.

Indeed--pasties, sliced cheese, fruit and other necessary elements of a lakeside picnic spill from the chest's topmost drawer. Soon, everyone has eaten. Minerva and Hermione wand away the mess while Hagrid and Hugo wade out into the shallow, sheltered cove. Between the two of them, they insist on examining every last tentacle of a restless and uncooperative squid.

Minerva pauses to watch Hermione watch Hugo watch Hagrid watch Spot. "Don't worry," she says, "Hagrid hardly ever loses a student."

Hermione shrugs. She tears her attention away from the spectacle of her son attempting to balance on the shoulders of sodden and accident-prone giant. Minerva is once again dressed in robes and leather boots and an ancient, thoroughly odd hat. _Full Minerva drag_, Hermione privately calls it. Minerva's comfort zone includes traditional wizarding clothes. Hermione, given a choice, will wear jeans, a jumper, and trainers.

"Do you think we'll all smell like confined squid forever?" Hermione asks. The picnic site is cleared. Minerva is arranging a few nearby elements into a comfortable nest for conversation.

"Hagrid and Hugo always smell like confined squid," Minerva answers. "Come here, then." She settles herself in the smoothed-out crook of an ancient tree root. Hermione sits beside her. With a flick of her wand, Minerva banishes the overpowering scent of seafood. It is replaced with the rich, loamy scent of turned earth, tree resin, and lake. And leek. Hermione smells leeks. She decides that the odor is coming from the purplish pom-poms that give Minerva's hat its air of sprightly menace.

The Bombay chest, resting throughout the picnic, squares its little carved shoulders and turns for home. The underbrush is thick. It hasn't gone far before Minerva absently vanishes it--back, Hermione presumes, to the bedroom.

"Difficult day for an antique," Hermione observes.

Minerva sucks in her chin. "Are we talking about the furniture or me?" She asks.

"Whoops!" _Splash_.

Hermione is distracted by Hugo's emergency belly-flop. Hagrid plunges his great head under the water to look for him, but it is the squid who comes up with the boy. Hugo sputters and kicks as he dangles by the collar. Hagrid resurfaces and calls back to the women, "S'all right! Sorted!"

Minerva's expression has changed. Softened.

"Now that you mention it," Hermione tells her, "That's part of my second theory."

"Hmmm," Minerva says. They are sitting quite closely together. Hermione can feel the tension rise in Minerva's body even as her tone stays neutral. Hermione moves closer, close enough that they are touching. She breathes. She lets the murmuring of the wind in the treetops and the rustling of life in the bushes, the cool roundness of stones beneath her and the warm arrows of sunlight reflected on water move through her body. The contact soothes Minerva.

"I think," Hermione says, "that you were rewarded for your efforts to protect the philosopher's stone. I think you were given some of Nicholas Flamel's immortality draught."

The sudden tension in Minerva's body resolves itself in a great snorting bark of laughter. It attracts the attention of the two men in the lake. Hermione waves to them in a manner she hopes will fail to communicate her absolute terror of what they're attempting now, then turns her attention to Minerva.

"What?" She says.

"Have you _met_ my father?" Minerva retorts.

"Just last afternoon, in fact, and you bloody well know it," Hermione says.

"Come to that, that's your answer--whether you refer to the furniture or to my own suspiciously good health. Both are gifts from Boban."

"But," Hermione begins. Minerva touches two fingers to her lover's lips. Hermione, not unpetulantly, clamps them shut.

"I have a theory of my own," Minerva says. Her eyes sparkle. Her two fingers trace Hermione's lips, then chuck her gently under the chin. "I believe that the moment I reveal my last secret, you will lose interest in my tiresome old self."

"Never happen," Hermione says.

Minerva's face, under ordinary circumstances, is a theatrical thing. But Hermione knows to look for Minerva's deepest emotions in the more subtle changes of expression, like the narrowing of the eyes and dilation of the pupils that now take Minerva's smile from carefree to calculating.

"It is far more likely that, once the novelty wears off, you will wake up and realize you are bored stiff with such a callow, tiresome girl," Hermione says. Her tone is as light as Minerva's, her eyes as avid.

They allow themselves a moment to look out upon the murky water together.

Minerva sighs. "Indeed, I probably shall. Which is why we ought to marry sooner rather than later, don't you think?"

Hermione's reply is cut short by the arrival of Hagrid and Hugo. They appear to be covered in chum.

"Spot brought back prezzies for all his mates!" Hugo explains.

* * *

The Bombay chest is covered in sticky green goo.

"I never would have taken you for a mint chip girl," says Hermione.

Steam rising from the great bathtub makes short work of the quart of Fortescue's Finest Ice Cream. Minerva, stretched out in the hot water, loathe to move but even less inclined to show weakness, leans forward with a groan. She scoops up a long drip of the green goo with her finger and offers it up to Hermione's lips. Hermione leans forward in the tub. The bubbles part for her. She first sniffs, then licks Minerva's fingers. Her eyebrow arches in unconscious imitation of Minerva's own.

"What is that?" She asks.

"Pistachio," Minerva answers. She sucks the remaining ice cream from her own finger and settles back into the bath.

Hermione conjures a spoon and helps herself to a big dollop of ice cream. "Multiple orgasms, France, and now pistachio ice cream," she says with her mouth full, "My love, you are a never ending source of delight."

"You are easily pleased," Minerva observes.

"Not according to my ex-husband."

The remaining rays of an ostentatious sunset color the stone walls of the bathing chamber vivid magenta. Minerva is not sure she approves of magenta. It seems a silly thing to do with perfectly sensible red. But Mother Nature does not consult Minerva in these matters.

The Victorian bathtub with the clawed feet has expanded to accommodate two women. It took a long time for Hermione to become comfortable with this arrangement. Given Minerva's proclivities in furniture, she doesn't blame the girl for hesitating to place her naked body into the open maw of something with claws on its feet.

_The girl. Sod it all. Where's my wand? _"_Accio _scotch," Minerva commands. But before her bottle of Laphroaig can make its way from the liquor pantry to Minerva's bath, Hermione's wand has secured a Meerschaum pipe whose bowl is stuffed with sweetly fragrant leaves.

"This," she says, flourishing her lit wand and touching flame to tobacco, "Is a peace offering from George, poor thing." She inhales a good bit of smoke into her lungs and savors it before letting it out again in perfect little rings.

"Piffle," Minerva says, "I think he looks handsome in a pelt."

"You are a wicked witch," Hermione growls, and suddenly she has pushed herself between Minerva's outstretched legs and is pressed, full-length, against her. She moves her mouth down for a kiss and exhales the pungent smoke of wizard's tobacco between Minerva's parted lips. Hermione's body is compact, muscular and womanly at the same time. Her softly rounded belly brushes against Minerva's wet skin. Minerva shivers, tastes the tobacco, opens her eyes and resists with all her considerable self-discipline the urge to wrap herself around Hermione, to cling in greedy desperation.

_Do not leave me_, she thinks. _Do not leave me_. The echoes make her open and close her fists even as Hermione's body retreats to the other end of the tub. "Hermione," she says. It is a bit of a gasp, a bit of a cough. Smoke and steam fogging her mind. "Hermione, have I?" She sees that the bubbles have almost gone, that her own bony roadmap--livid pink scar that nearly obliterates her left breast, papery white skin that shows each blue vein, each dip and sag and spot where the years have marked her—is magnified in the clearing water. "Have I presumed too much? I understand," again, she struggles not to say too much, not to give too little. She understands that Hermione is a young woman with all of life ahead of her. She understands that Hermione has only recently emerged from the land of blame and self-loathing where all women stay after first love has fled. She understands that the love for which Minerva has waited her entire life may only be--what? _A lay by? Surely not…_

"Minerva?"

The pipe is being offered. She takes it, inhales deeply, lets her thoughts drift away on the blue-tinged smoke.

"Minerva, I want to marry you," Hermione says. She is leaning forward, eyes wide, trying to command Minerva's attention. "I'm confused about what that means to you since witches who want to marry are still in goddamned legal limbo with the Ministry, but if you want a ceremony, we'll have one. If you want me to wear your ring, I'll wear it. If you want me to wear Flora's fucking livery, I'll wear that. If you'd like to tattoo your name in red and gold letters across my arse, then that is What. We. Shall. Do."

Minerva lets go of the breath she couldn't help but hold. "Well," she says, because Hermione is clearly waiting for an acknowledgement of her words.

Outside, the light is shaded blue. Orange flame bursts to life in the sconces that line the chamber walls.

"Am I being selfish?" Minerva asks. Her gentle voice echoes in the hard stillness that has settled around them.

In reply to which, Minerva is astonished to note, Hermione laughs.

She laughs loud enough and hard enough to stir up turbulence in the tub. Water sloshes over the sides, drowns the pipe, and makes the Bombay chest take a delicate step backward. She laughs long enough that Minerva doesn't know quite what to do with her hands while she waits for the unexpected mirth to subside. She settles on twiddling her ice cream spoon, which prompts the younger woman to sweep up the little melting quart of ice cream and, giggling, hand it to her.

Minerva accepts the carton with as much dignity as her puzzlement will allow.

"Oh, dear," Hermione gasps. "Oh, my love," she takes a few more steadying breaths. "Selfish? You want to hear about selfish? Let me tell you about selfish," she waves her own spoon, digs up a big mouthful of ice cream from the proffered carton, swallows hard, then continues. "I want you," she says, "To marry me, to quit your job, to leave behind the life you obviously love, and to go traipsing with me all over the world on a series of comically ill-advised and foolhardy foreign policy missions."

Thankfully, at that moment, a full bottle of scotch arrives at the open window, floats across the bathing chamber, and splashes down in Minerva's lap.

* * *

The little Bombay chest stands sentinel at bedside. A small lamp is lit upon it. "Difficult day for an antique," Minerva says.

They lie side by side in bed. Neither bothers to read. There is thinking to be done. Minerva's hand reaches out, finds Hermione's hand, and closes around it. Hermione squeezes back.

"Third theory," Minerva says.

"Sorry?"

"You said you had three theories. You've told me about two. Do you want to tell me the third?"

Hermione waits a long time before she replies. This little shell-shocked quiet before the hard business of making decisions, of working out the details of those decisions, and of living up to those decisions, is precious to her. She knows that if Minerva refuses to join her, she will not accept the position.

_Hang the Ministry. Hang Britain. Hang the world. Let someone else save it for a change. _

She doesn't let herself imagine what might happen if the rest of the magical world finds out that Britain—a wizarding superpower—has entirely lost its time-turner capabilities; that they are, in global terms, a great big fat juicy ripe sitting duck for any predator hungry enough to attack them. Only inertia, Draco Malfoy, and a careful campaign of misinformation, has kept them safe so far. _Blast._

This is what Hermione thinks. What she says is, "Do you remember when you told me that you owe your life—your recovery from the war—to a few good men?"

"Yes."

"Well, I assume that a 'few' refers to more than two. Loquacious Jones is probably one. Your father—that was him I saw in the memory, wasn't it? The one waiting for you at International Wizengamot Headquarters? He is two."

"Yes."

"And the third is Albus Dumbledore."

Minerva laces her fingers with Hermione's. Hermione senses relief in the way Minerva's shoulders relax into the pillows. "Yes," Minerva says. "Is that your theory?"

_Target acquired. Warhead armed. Bay doors open. Bombs away._

"No," Hermione replies, "My theory is that, in spite of mountains of evidence; in spite of all the excellent reasons why it is a preposterous idea, in spite of all the times I've seen you deny it, that you actually _were_ sleeping with him, weren't you?"

Sometimes, Hermione fancies that she can feel the ground beneath her sway like a great ship on the black loch. It is as if the island upon which McGonagall Manor is built were floating. The thought both frightens and fascinates her.

"Hermione," Minerva says. It is a deep, throaty whisper, a voice more fatigued than mere toil could ever produce. "I will go with you. I will follow you around the world and to the moon and back, if that's where you must go. First thing tomorrow morning I will draft my resignation for the Board of Governors and the Ministry. It will not be effective immediately, of course. The transition will take time. However," she sighs, "There are some things we must do first."


	19. Gift of the Magi I: The Phantom Menace

A/N: I am deeply, deeply sorry about the title. Sometimes, the better angels of my nature lose control entirely.

Disclaimer: It is Jo Rowling's world. We just live in it

* * *

Summer Solstice 1998

Minerva McGonagall already has a headache. This morning, an exhausted owl arrived with a scroll of parchment. Since the owlery lies in ruins, the poor thing flew round the castle until Minerva chanced to walk through a roofless corridor. The bundle that landed on her head nearly knocked her unconscious. The wealth of ideas it contains threatens to finish the job.

Hermione Granger. Minerva should have known.

She needs a brisk walk, but she is in no hurry to get back to work. If any sentient soul is up and about, it has had the good sense to stay out of her way. She marches the long path that leads from the near bank of the Black Lake, through the least threatening finger of the Forbidden Forest, round Hagrid's hut and Pomona's greenhouses, then up to the great shattered hulk of a castle.

When last Minerva saw the Granger girl, she was off to Australia to retrieve her parents—something about an elaborate memory charm was mentioned—and to take a well-earned holiday with Ronald Weasley. Now that Miss Granger and Mr. Weasley spend most of their time joined at the lips, poor Harry no longer feels at home in their company. Minerva cannot blame him. She's not especially fond of it herself.

"Drop me a line," she told them, then gently pushed them out the gate.

The line Hermione Granger has dropped runs to thirty feet of parchment. It contains a detailed outline of plans for repeating seventh years to act as student teachers; to help alleviate staffing shortages by teaching the first years in exchange for the more intimate, research-oriented guidance that is appropriate for NEWT level students. This is more or less what Minerva herself has in mind.

But it doesn't stop there. Oh, no. As Minerva reads, the parchment trails behind her, airborne, like the tail of a skinny kite.

It also offers sample curriculums for the complete integration of Muggle Studies into the core classes. Miss Granger argues persuasively, and at length, that wars like the one they've recently survived can only be prevented by more comprehensive cultural education.

_And caning_, Minerva thinks. When she remembers how all that dangerously sexy rot about a "Dark Lord" and the exotic-sounding "Voldemort" actually sprang from the developmentally arrested brain of that snotty, gormless, _prat_ Tom Riddle, she can almost believe that some good, old-fashioned corporal punishment regularly applied to his poxy adolescent arse might have spared the wizarding world twenty-odd years of genuine terror.

_Probably not_, she muses. _I only like to think so because I have always cherished a desire to beat Tom with a blunt object. At least now I know why._

Reading further, Minerva discovers that Miss Granger has included a cross-referenced appendix that lists several relevant sociological studies. With statistical graphs. And flow charts. Minerva cannot help but wonder how young Weasley manages to leave Hermione with so much time on her hands.

_Oh, but this is the topper,_ Minerva thinks as she reviews a plan to replace traditional Dark Arts courses with a series of seminars taught in cooperation with the Ministry of Magic's Department of Aurors. Guest lecturers. Hands-on demonstrations. Real-life case studies. Miss Granger is sure that she can organize the whole thing, so long as Minerva gives her a few weeks notice.

Minerva McGonagall has an entire castle to rebuild. Hermione Granger wants her to lead the cultural revolution while she's at it.

Maybe she _should_ give two weeks notice. Not to Granger, but to the Ministry. Wouldn't it be lovely to finally call her promise fulfilled? To pack her case and fly away somewhere exotic? Somewhere warm? Somewhere with beaches covered in topless women, none of whom has ever served detention in her classroom?

_Absolutely. Some delicious country where teenagers are against the law._

She powers her way up the steep incline that leads to the thickest part of the Forbidden Forest. The hill does not slow her pace. _At least young Granger has never mooned over her teachers_, Minerva gratefully allows, _which makes all that restless intellectual energy endurable._

Minerva needs privacy to think, but the castle proper is swarming with workers. She cannot walk a meter in any direction without being accosted by someone who needs to know where to put this, or where to build that, or when something will arrive, or where the room that's just been painted got up and went to. Does the Headmistress want to see what the devil's snare has done to the main foundation? Has anyone been informed that fiendfyre is still burning out of control in several of the larger landscape paintings? Shall we make the Chamber of Secrets handicapped accessible?

Has anyone seen Fluffy?

* * *

"Bring me the Stag."

Minerva stops. Her wand is in her hand. She backtracks several steps until she is at the crest of the hill. It makes her an easier target, but it also gives her a full view.

The basso profundo making demands comes from the shadows of the forest several yards down the path. Minerva's pupils dilate and stretch. She sniffs the wind. Her ears twitch to the ambient sounds.

One shadow steps into the light.

"Bane," she says.

He nods his head to acknowledge that she has spoken. She doesn't put away her wand.

The centaur's flanks are glossy and black. His skin is nearly as dark. He moves closer, keeping always to the forested edge of the steep path. Finally, he stops some few feet away. He is careful not to let his head be higher than hers.

"The hour approaches. Bring me the Stag."

"He's dead," she tells him. He knows this. What game is he playing?

"It is the way of things," he says. "The old Stag is dead. The young Stag reigns."

Slowly, Minerva's mind works its way around to find his meaning. The little spike of alarm in her chest, the sudden need to breathe deeply, the tensing of her muscles for battle—she betrays as little as she can. Instead, she slips her wand back into her sleeve. Then, deliberately, she gathers in the long roll of parchment.

"He is too young," she says. It is a voice of icy edges. Few intelligent beings would pursue the matter further.

The centaur, however, charges.

His great hooves kick up showers of dirt and stone and duff. The ground itself shakes as he rages up the hill, full-speed, his head and shoulders held out before him like a battering ram. Minerva smells the fresh earth. She smells the sweet muskiness of centaur. She smells the rage roll off him in frothing waves. He thunders toward her with an inarticulate bellow of frustration.

When he stops, his face is only inches from hers. "BRING THE STAG!" He screams.

She does not flinch.

She locks her eyes on his until he is forced to look away. Still, his muscles quiver. An arm swings up and points toward the ruined castle. "See what happens when the Rite is ignored. See what you have done," he says in a voice so deep that Minerva feels it as much as hears it.

She speaks slowly, carefully enunciating each syllable. "Find another."

"NO!"

_Whack!_

Almost of its own accord, the parchment scroll has risen up and smacked Bane across the face.

Stunned, he takes a step back. Pressing her sudden advantage, Minerva closes the distance between them and smacks him across the nose a second time.

_Whack!_ "Leave," she growls.

Bane's arms reflexively move up to protect his face. He snorts, tosses his head and rolls his large brown eyes.

_Whack!_ "Harry!" The hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stand on end. Her fingers ache with the memory of claws bursting forth.

The centaur's great body rears. His forelegs kick wildly about as he strains to wheel around in mid-air. Minerva advances again, this time aiming for a spot on his retreating rump.

_Whack!_ "ALONE!" She roars from a place so deep it startles the birds out of the trees.

Even as Bane gallops away from her, she must force herself not to follow. The instinct to chase sings in her veins. She trembles with it, with the scent of fear stinging her nostrils and the sound of a hammering heart echoing in her ears. She gasps for air. Sweat runs down her face and her sides.

"Bloody nag," she hisses.

*****

Tom Riddle had an ironic sense of humor. That is why, when his puppet government passed the set of laws setting pureblood wizardkind above all others, the laws were called the _volksgesetz. _

Acromantulas are nocturnal. That is why their clearing in the center of the Forbidden Forest is not, currently, swarming with giant talking spiders.

The _volksgesetz_ are suspended. New laws regarding the status and rights of all magical beings, sentient and non-sentient, are being crafted. When the new laws go into effect, acromantulas might be classified as sentient beings. It is a capital crime to kill a sentient being. It is murder.

That is, of course, unless one _is_ an acromantula. When an acromantula kills a sentient being, it is lunch. In September, Hogwarts will be swarming with hundreds of tasty acromantula snacks.

Right now, the Forbidden Forest hosts the largest acromantula colony history has ever recorded. There are fewer giant talking spiders in all of Borneo than there are within one hundred feet of where Minerva now stands. Just beyond her, there is a short ravine that leads to a deep glen. Above the glen is woven a great silken dome that protects and disguises a family. It is a family not unlike her own--wanting only to be left alone to live by its own rules--watched over by a matriarch not unlike herself.

Minerva does not pray, unless one counts the way her soul sounds its clear, resonant note on those occasions when deep magic and precise science meet to some great purpose within her person. But that is more hymn of praise than petition for mercy. No, Minerva accepts that the universe is simply bigger than she is. If Judgment comes, she will be damned or spared according to some scale she cannot calculate. Justice will be done. It will be right by definition. She is at peace with that.

Minerva adjusts her hat.

She lifts her wand as if she is about to conduct a symphony. The forest stills. "_Acromantula exumai_," barely leaves her lips as sound, but that is all it takes. The glen beyond murmurs and mumbles as if in reply. Minerva listens until all is once again quiet. Then she raises both arms skyward until the loose black sleeves of her robes fall back to reveal pale and sinewy arms. She plants her feet. She growls, "_Mmmorrrs temblorrrumm__m_."

The words grow as they leave her lips. They magnify, resonate, spread in exponential waves as the earthen walls of the glen shift, twitch, and liquefy. An unimaginable mass of earth upends itself and crashes down upon the silken dome. Sticky threads rip away from rock moorings and fold in on themselves, falling with a graceful finality. It is a trap sprung upon those who wove it. After the dome falls, it is buried in black earth. After the earth settles, it is covered in a groaning cascade of limestone boulders. Great trees are uprooted and swept along in the tide.

Minerva rides out the aftershocks on four padded feet. Then she sprints away from the mound of rubble she's just created. She finds high ground in a small clearing ringed by the exposed roots of prehistoric trees. As she watches, the black earth below begins to boil. The surface roils with seasick violence. Soon, perhaps a hundred fuzzy black bodies are popping free of the rubble. Mud and sticks cling to their long, articulated legs. Some are injured, bleeding, trailing puddles of greenish goo behind them. Of these, their more able siblings make short, grisly work.

Acromantulas eat their wounded.

Some few dozen more are killed in territorial squabbles over feeding rights. When at last the red-fanged survivors give their attention to the disaster that has turned the grand nest into a mass grave, when they taste the earth and spit it out because the magic is still bitter in their mouths, one of them notices the grey tabby cat streaking through the underbrush toward the deepest part of the Forbidden Forest.

There are no more than twenty left to give chase. Every one is at least three times the size of a housecat. This works to Minerva's advantage. Tangled roots make slow going for eight long, delicate limbs. It not only lets her take a more direct path than her pursuers, but it leads the acromantulas to wander into one another's way. With their hunting instincts aroused, they are even more territorial. Every clumsy crash becomes a fight to the death. With luck, the winner is hobbled enough to fall behind or become prey itself. Minerva hears the ripping of limbs, smells the carnage that trails her. She navigates the narrow spaces with sensitive whiskers. The darkening forest is vivid in blues and greens to her feline eyes. The glorious harmony of muscle and bone, breath and blood all moving together is a sensation long lost to her human self.

Without slowing down, Minerva wrinkles her muzzle, lowers her chin and lets her tongue taste the air. It is as she hoped. A great, angry herd has convened just beyond the edge of trees. She can't risk sprinting out among them. She is agile, but hooves are sharp and tempers are hot. Instead, she chooses the last great oak, runs full speed at the trunk, and lets claws plus momentum pull her straight up into its sheltering branches. Birds squawk. Red squirrels chitter angrily.

Fortunately, the hunting party on the ground takes no notice of the ruckus overhead. Instead, eleven adolescent acromantulas scurry into a bright clearing already inhabited by many large, armed centaurs.

Minerva does not stay to watch what happens next.

* * *

"He's already died for your sins, Albus Perceval Wulfric Brian By God Dumbledore, and not even almighty Hogwarts can ask more of him than that," Minerva punctuates each word with a flick of her wand. Sparks fly from the tip and scatter across an office full of packed cases.

Headmasters cower in their portraits. All, that is, except Albus Dumbledore. He sucks a painted lemon candy and appears to consider Minerva's words.

"True," he concludes. It may be the most he can say with his lips drawn into an involuntary pucker. "I'm only saying that it makes sense…"

He is cut off by Minerva, who pauses in her pacing to face him. Her hands rest on her hips. "Sense? What right have you to decide what makes sense? When have you ever made sense? I let you abandon him to be reared by those monstrous Muggles. I kept my distance so that you could more easily manipulate the child. I let you send him into mortal danger time and time again. No more. Neither you nor anyone else will strip him of what little innocence he has left," she lectures.

"She's right," says Phineas Black. Minerva's jaw drops momentarily. It only takes her a moment to recover her composure and raise an eyebrow at the portrait of Hogwart's least popular headmaster. "Prunelike and shrill, but right," he continues.

Minerva scowls and turns away. Phineas Black usually pretends to sleep while she speaks. If he agrees with her, it is only as a precursor to some greater mischief. She turns her attention to the Granger girl's endless parchment and studies her suggestions in more detail than her morning walk allowed.

Unfortunately, Albus has always taken the old Slytherin seriously. "Do go on," he urges.

"That boy can no more play the Stag for the Great Rite than you can, Albus. He's ignorant of history and silly as a schoolgirl in his personal affections. Killing him for the greater good was easy enough. This--this requires some gravitas. He'd only muck it up and injure himself in the process."

Minerva allows a smile to play at the corners of her lips. Phineas expects her to defend Harry. He thinks he can sway her simple mind with pureblood condescension and some reverse psychology. Phineas always underestimates women. Particularly Gryffindor women.

"Just so," Minerva says without turning. "Thank you, Phineas."

She feels painted eyes on her back as she makes notes by hand. Her posture is perfect. Her robes are immaculate. The long, long day is creeping through her bones like an ashwinder in wood.

"Did it hurt you, my dear?" Dumbledore quietly asks. "Were you injured by what I asked you to do?" Minerva's finely tuned ears hear the offhand note in his voice that means he is desperate to know the answer. Damn him.

She stops writing and half-turns to watch his face out of the corner of her eye. "Not a bit, Albus. But as you may remember, I was thirty-one years old at the time. And hardly," she turns back to footnotes and flow charts, "virginal."

"I was," he says.

She drops her quill and pinches the bridge of her nose. There is a great rustling among the Headmasters. She lets it die down before taking quill back in hand. "No you weren't," she says.

"Well, technically…" He doesn't get a chance to finish his thought amidst the general clamor amongst the talking heads. They've caused a scandal, the two of them. Eyes that haven't seen daylight this century pop open to join in the general tsking and tittering.

Minerva does have one fervent hope for the afterlife. It is that whatever portion of her human nature that gossips and grudges and bitches and bickers shall be left behind in an official portrait, so that the portion that moves along to the next great mystery might have better sense.

She takes up her quill once again. On the parchment before her, she has written:

_Dear Miss Granger_

_Thank you for your most recent owl. Your suggestions are most…_

Minerva reads her words and then rereads them. Then she puts quill to parchment and writes:

…_timely. By all means, make whatever arrangements are necessary to implement the new Dark Arts curriculum. Keep me apprised of your activities and report for the upcoming term two weeks early._

_Yours Most Sincerely,_

_M. McGonagall_

_Headmistress, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry_

There is a knock on the door. The portrait cacophony quiets. Minerva jumps. With the griffin that guards her door feeling out of sorts, she gets no warning when visitors are lurking about.

She opens the door. There is nothing there save an oversized, disembodied pair of man-feet shod in disreputable trainers.

"Come in, Harry," she says.


	20. Great Rite

Warnings: AD/MM

* * *

Midsummer 1957

Perhaps she has overestimated his affection for her. Perhaps her great gift for the physical cannot overcome his basic inclinations. Perhaps drugged, in public, and impersonating the Primordial are not the best circumstances under which to have a first fling.

Albus Dumbledore is wider at the shoulder, harder-muscled, less hairy than Minerva has imagined. He has the ropy, strong muscles of a naturally thin man, but his wrists are thicker, his bones heavier than she thought they would be.

The gentleness, she expects. The Edwardian reticence is a surprise. Of course, it might not be excessive modesty that has discomfited him. It might be that they are fully naked in public and surrounded by dozens of beings engaged in various and splendid acts of a lascivious nature.

Even the trees are watching.

* * *

1949

Minerva sometimes imagines the conversation. There's no way it happens by accident or in passing, because Magnus McGonagall and Albus Dumbledore do not overlap anywhere. Boban is too young to have been a Dumbledore classmate and too old to have been a Dumbledore student. Magnus is robust, rough, rural and spiritual. Dumbledore is gracile, nuanced, worldly and secular.

It was probably one of those masculine things. With cigars.

Boban-unable to convince Minerva to emerge from the bedchamber where she sits vigil for three weeks and watches her mother let go of this world; at loose ends himself from the loss of his son and the loss of his wife and now, apparently, the loss of his daughter—goes out to find a famous man. He finds him in an office. Brief pleasantries are exchanged. Dumbledore falls silent. Magnus looks him in the eye and says, "The little gel's shattered. Can ye pit'er back thigither?"

Albus Dumbledore, Transfiguration Master, considers the problem.

And then, sometime soon after, Minerva awakens to find him sitting quietly at her bedside. "Hello, my dear," he says. Fawkes sits on his shoulder. The Phoenix is new-made, fluffed up and content in the quiet room. Dumbledore's hair has gone from mostly auburn to mostly white. There remains a bit of red at the tip of the beard. The effect is hypnotizing.

* * *

Midsummer 1957

His kisses are competent. His caresses are caring. She feels a little like a laboratory subject in his arms.

The privacy spell he has cast doesn't hide them from the celebrants. Rather, the other revelers are merely disinclined to stare. As a result, it must seem to them that Albus and Minerva are off somewhere doing the sorts of things one would expect them to be doing. But it isn't right yet and Minerva knows it.

* * *

1949

As the last jagged word of the story leaves her lips, she closes her mouth. She closes her eyes. Six months, and she knows now that this is the story Dumbledore came to find—the one about Mars and the train and the blackened stump of a hand found in tall grass. She waits to hear his voice say that war is horrible business. She waits to hear the calm, logical assertion that every soldier who has ever gone to war has killed his own brother. She waits to hear speculation about the dozens of lives she saved that day. It isn't as if she doesn't already know all of that. She does. She also knows that none of it makes a goddam bit of difference.

So when the silence goes on for longer than she expects, she opens her eyes. She sees her library magically lit by an artificial sun. She sees wood and leather furniture worn soft and smooth from years of use. She sees the chessboard, her remaining bishop positioned as bait. It will be bloody, but she'll checkmate in six moves.

Minerva suspects that Albus is beginning to regret teaching her this game.

She sees Albus Dumbledore, agitated and wide-eyed, his teeth grinding in a locked jaw, dark storm clouds gathering in his piercing blue eyes. He stands up. Chessmen go flying. Apologetically, he gathers them all up and returns each to its place. He studies the board like a bird of prey studies a new-mown field. And then—he deflates. All the air goes out of him so suddenly that Minerva is surprised he doesn't whistle.

Her shoulders are painfully hunched. She shakes off the urge to hug her knees. A deflated Albus Dumbledore is disturbing on levels she has not been aware of possessing.

"I need something from you," he confesses, slowly, as if each word is painful and needs his full attention. All of her questions fall away when he seizes her hands and says, "I need someone to love. Someone strong enough to survive the experience."

* * *

Midsummer 1957

She steps closer to the firelight. In the years since the war, her hair has grown long and wild. It falls darkly about her shoulders. Her pale body is thin, lightly scarred, rosy in the red light. He watches her for clues.

* * *

1950

In the morning, Magnus McGonagall packs his broken heart in a battered leather bag and sets out to wander the wild world over. Flora packs him a picnic. Minerva kisses each of his great hands and stays dry-eyed until he is out of sight. That evening, the solitary lady of McGonagall Manor receives a visitor. Albus Dumbledore pretends that he is just passing by. Minerva doesn't buy it for a moment, but she is grateful for the company. He tells her a story about an unexpected duel, a kidnapping attempt, an ill-advised mid-apparition misdirection, and a muggle tea towel. When he is finished, he reaches down and, with a flourish, yanks his yellow satin robe up to reveal bony knees.

"There," he says. "You may examine the evidence yourself."

On his left knee is a scar in the shape of the London Underground.

"That's certainly impressive," Minerva says, "But where does the tea towel come in?"

He quickly lowers the hem of his robe. "Did I forget to explain that part?" He asks, blushing.

She pours him another shot of firewhiskey and says, "You are a barmy old bat."

* * *

Midsummer 1957

Boldly, she takes his hand and places it on her breast. Her nipple darkens and tightens at his touch. A smile ghosts his lips. He trails long, sensitive fingers over her swelling curves and she pushes into his palm, increases the pressure, makes her own pleasure manifest. His face registers wonder as he explores her tender flesh, gauges her reactions, tests the softness, the weight, the warmth, the yielding swollen buds at his command. He pauses only when she lets out a small explosion of breath, but she smiles to let him know that small explosions of breath are not, in fact, bad things. The corners of his eyes crinkle. There is some definitively masculine triumph there, Minerva thinks.

* * *

1951

"Boogie-woogie?" She blinks.

He nods. "Boogie-woogie," he confirms.

Knowing he can read her more obvious emotions at will, Minerva doesn't bother to suppress a smirk.

(At first, she imagines that he favors her work at the Department of Mysteries because it seems like a safe place to keep her, and he desperately needs her to be safe. After meeting her supervisor for the first time, she decides that the old reprobate has indulged in a bit of matchmaking. Then, the project to which she is assigned is so suited to her skills, she eventually believes that his motives have been pure all along. But now—now she knows the truth. Dumbledore has stashed her among the Unspeakables so that they might have somewhere entirely private to practice swing dancing.)

That there is some vital security reason for him to be flailing about on dance floors, Minerva does not doubt.

The big victrola groans. Artemus Shaw wails. Albus Dumbledore jitters and jives just exactly like a sixty-seven-year-old Englishman in a lavender gown. At least the silver clasp she has fashioned for his beard keeps it from smothering her in the clinches.

"Woooo-Hooooo!" He observes.

On the whole, Minerva prefers to waltz.

* * *

Midsummer 1957

She throws her arms around his chest and moves in close. Her head finds his shoulder, nestles into his neck. She concentrates on his scent. She concentrates on feeling his skin pressed tightly to her own. In spite of this new and bitterly won knowledge—that her heart truly opens only to a feminine touch—her body responds to the contrast of hard on soft. Male on female.

* * *

1953

"We are a sideshow act," Minerva complains over Bath Buns at Sally Lunn's. She pushes a copy of _The Daily Prophet _across the small table. Its gossip pages are filled with photos of the two of them dancing at Ministry balls and cheering on the Holyhead Harpies.

They are disguised as Muggles. Albus wears his extremely green cashmere herringbone suit with matching bowler. It contrasts nicely with the strawberry jam on his lapels.

"You be the Bearded Lady, and I'll be Merkin the Magician," he suggests.

* * *

Midsummer 1957

Still, it is mostly comfort she feels in the circle of his arms. She opens her eyes to see the great black shadows of centaurs mounting their mates. She can smell the heated flesh. Their high, wild cries make the night air colder.

They had better figure out how to do that, she and Albus. They had better figure out how to come together, male and female, god and goddess. They had better figure out how to do it with the same reckless violence and loving tenderness that first formed the world, because this is old magic, powerful magic, time-out-of-mind magic and, honestly, a friendly fuck just won't do.

* * *

1955

There is nothing better for a broken heart than an old queen with chocolate. Minerva eats her way through the casualties as her milk chocolate army lays waste to the forces of his dark chocolate king. The pawns only squeal a little bit as she bites off their heads.

They play in his office, his new office, the office of the Headmaster. His trinkets seem lost in the large space. Minerva imagines he will soon acquire enough toys to fill the empty shelves and cupboards.

They have come to that place in their friendship where she has told all there is to tell, and he has said all he will ever say. It is a comfortable silence, punctuated only by the screams of tiny horses.

_He must have known_, she thinks. _He was so eager to throw us in that dungeon together_.

"My dear," he says, "I had no idea this would happen."

She hates it when he does that.

* * *

Midsummer 1957

It occurs to Minerva that a little legilimency would be useful in the clinches. Could he feel what she feels? Would it be more exciting to know without being told which itch to scratch? She has always suspected that her mind is as open to his as a flower in May. But she throws her head back, stares out at the stars, and tries to open wider for him.

Fear. Uncertainty. Ambivalence. The shame and thrill of the wetness between her legs. The brutal emptiness of her most intimate places. Her trust in him. Her anxiety for him. Her desire to please him, to impress him, to best him, to put him in his place.

He groans as he laps the tender skin of her throat.

She lets herself taste her own feelings for him. He's a wily old beast. He is manipulative and maddening and canny, but he is no more monster than he is angel.

He's a man on the tip of her tongue. She isn't afraid of him.

* * *

Spring 1957

She stops. The world stops, really.

It is a leaky day on the Black Lake. Spot frolics in a shallow cove. Owls whizz and whir overhead, flying high to avoid being caught in the wake of a herd of circling thestrals. In short, it is a perfectly normal day at Hogwarts. There is nothing to indicate to Minerva that the world has not gone positively barking.

"Could you repeat that, please?" She asks.

Walking at her side, Dumbledore repeats, "Something happened this week that gives me reason to believe that Hogwarts is in grave danger. In consequence, the centaurs have agreed to let me join in the performance of an ancient and sacred ritual of protection. I shall play the Stag in the Great Rite. It would be a tremendous honor if you would join me."

"Join you?"

"Yes."

"As the Mother?"

"Maid, Crone, whatever. The female principle, certainly."

"In the Great Rite?"

"Yes."

"And the centaurs have _agreed_ to this?"

"Their suggestion, actually."

Minerva once again stops at water's edge. Tiny waves lap at her toes. She is cold. All the heat that once threatened to consume her has burned itself out and now she is as calm and contained as a lump of polished coal. It suits her to teach here, a cipher in a cloister. She loves her students. She loves her subject. She loves her boss, when he isn't being a perfect fool. And sometimes, she admits, even when he is being a perfect fool. The Bearded Lady and Merkin the Magician make a damned fine team.

They are closer to the Forbidden Forest than they are to the castle, so Minerva feels no compunction whatever when her voice rises high enough to alarm the thestrals.

"You are aware, are you not, that you are an elderly homosexual and I am a lesbian spinster?"

"Of course."

She turns from him and begins the long hike back to the castle. "This was not covered in the curriculum you provided at start of term, Albus."

* * *

Midsummer 1957

There is little of science in these spells. It is more a matter of aligning elements than forcing them to do one's will. The stars glitter in a black sky. The drums murmur and roar. The faithful gather. A fire is lit. Potions are passed from lip to lip. Male and female flow together. The act of creation is accomplished in joy and reverence.

She passes a hand over his eyes and closes them. She guides his fingers to her hair, lets them rest on her head in silent benediction as she slowly sinks to her knees before him, trails light kisses along his chest and belly and hip. He is semi-hard. The potions and their mutual explorations have done the work. Now, she finds the base of his shaft with her lips and softly tastes the warm flesh there. She lets his heat caress her face. It jerks and twitches as the blood races to fill it. She flutters her eyelashes along the sensitive ridge at the head. Her hands, resting on his thighs, feel them tense. She smiles. Her tongue flicks out to lick his underside and his fingers flex in her hair.

Her hands move along his thighs, slide past his hips, and rest on the great muscles of his ass. At the same time, her lips travel along his hot, growing length and part to take him fully into her mouth.

His knees buckle. She braces him with her body and slides him as far into her as he will go. He grows in her mouth, sways on his feet, throws his head back, moans a broken refrain to the night, and her heart sings harmony.

Albus Dumbledore is melting like a great piece of lemon candy on her tongue. Sweet and sour. The satisfaction of a minor craving.

He trembles, breathless, hard and straining at the bonds of his own skin.

Minerva holds him in two hands and playfully licks his smooth head. Then she releases him. He opens his eyes, tries to focus on his surroundings, opens his mouth as if to speak. But before he can fully regain himself, Minerva turns in place.

She stretches out before him on her hands and knees, lets her head drop, arches her back, thrusts herself up in silent offering. Leaves flutter as the man kneels behind her. She feels strong hands take her hips. One hand moves down to help push himself inside her. She rocks back to take him in.

She hopes his magic-dimmed eyes see the one he truly wants.

His hips slam her forward as his hands pull her back with bruising force. He growls. She gasps. The earth smells wet and ripe. Wind plays with the sweat that forms on her face and back and breasts. Trees sway in time with their joined bodies. Dark shapes move in slow motion all around them. Her fingers push into the soft earth beneath her and anchor them as the stars slowly circle overhead.

* * *

Thirty-nine times, they meet at midsummer.


	21. The Brightest Witch of Her Age

Author's Note: This has been reshuffled to fit in chronologically with the rest of the story

* * *

In a little-used toilet on the third floor of Hogwarts, Hermione suppresses a shiver. A stained and battered old lavatory is marked with a new brass plaque. The plaque says:

_Chamber of Secrets_

_Tours by Appointment Only_

Beyond the lavatories stand the remains of a row of stalls. They emit a powerful scent of rotting wood. The last stall in the row boasts an intact door. The door is scarred with layer after layer of chipping, wear, and carved insults. But it, too, has a plaque. This plaque is covered with what, from a distance, appear to be flaming hieroglyphs. Up close, one can see that the hieroglyphs are really tiny, engraved letters. They say:

_We apologise for the inconvenience. _

_Out of order. Use at your own risk.. For educational purposes only. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Void where prohibited. Some assembly required. Batteries not included. Contents may settle during shipment. Use only as directed. No other warranty expressed or implied. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Subject to approval. Apply only to affected area. May be too intense for some viewers. Feed a cold; starve a fever. For recreational use only. All models over 18 years of age. If condition persists, consult your physician. No user-serviceable parts inside. Freshest if eaten before date on carton. Subject to change without notice. Times approximate. Simulated picture. Breaking seal constitutes acceptance of agreement. For off-road use only. As seen on TV. One size fits all. Many suitcases look alike. Contains a substantial amount of non-tobacco ingredients. Colors may, in time, fade. Slippery when wet. Not affiliated with the British Red Cross. Edited for television. Keep cool; process promptly. Not responsible for direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages resulting from any defect, error or failure to perform. At participating locations only. Not the Beatles. Penalty for private use. Substantial penalty for early withdrawal. Employees and their families are not eligible. Beware of dog. Contestants have been briefed on some questions before the show. Limited time offer, call now to ensure prompt delivery. You must be present to win. No passes accepted for this engagement. No purchase necessary. Use only in well-ventilated area. Keep away from fire or flame. Approved for veterans. Booths for two or more. Some equipment shown is optional. Price does not include taxes. Not recommended for children. Prerecorded for this time zone. Reproduction strictly prohibited. No solicitors. No alcohol, dogs, or horses. No anchovies unless otherwise specified. Call toll free before digging. Decision of judges is final. Keep calm and carry on. Mind the gap._

_This supersedes all previous notices._

Hermione opens the door and enters the stall. The inside is surprisingly spacious. It features a tufted red velvet banquette trimmed in gold fringe, a gilt chandelier, and electric blue damask wall coverings. The only hint of the original toilet stall is the wooden door, upon which is drawn, in permanent black ink, a caricature of Albus Dumbledore. It has a blacked out front tooth. The caption below it reads:

_For a good time, call Albus_.

"Bless me father, for I have sinned," Hermione says, "It's been 486 years since my last confession."

"Three Hail Marys," says the graffito.

"The C of E no longer requires those, either," Hermione answers.

"Indeed? Is there some equivalent?"

"First three verses of 'God Save the Queen', probably."

"How unfortunate."

"Hmm."

"Hmm."

"Any progress, by the way?" Hermione absently picks at the fluffy velveteen lint balls that hide in the banquette's hidden recesses.

"I remain optimistic," He says. His voice is tinny and lacks a lower register, as if it were recorded on cheap equipment, "Although I could never teach the child a blessed thing when she was alive, I believe that, with patience and all of eternity at my disposal, I may yet persuade her to escape the prison of perpetual adolescence."

"You only come here to look at willies!" Comes the reply from the next stall. It is followed by Moaning Myrtle's distinctly affronted sigh, a loud splash, and the roar of a flushing toilet. Then, a gurgley sort of sound echoes along the ancient pipes. It might be air in the lines.

Or it might be, "Thhhhhhbbbbbppppptttttt!"

"Good luck with that," Hermione says.

"Thank you, my dear. Now, is there something I might do for you?"

Hermione struggles to suppress her own distinctly affronted sigh. Instead, she sits up straight, folds her hands in her lap, and tilts her head as she considers her words. In her most professional tone, she says, "I've just had my worst romantic fears realized. I thought I'd fall apart, but I find I can't be arsed. Also, the woman I love wants to marry me. This might require my presence at some sort of orgy. With woodland creatures."

Dumbledore's crudely animated face becomes even more animated as the slashing black lines that form his eyes ripple over uneven wood. "Woodland creatures? Bunnies? Squirrels? Pixies? Hagrid?"

"Centaurs!"

"Centaurs will not find you particularly attractive, my dear."

"I know that."

"Haven't got the hindquarters for that sort of…"

"I KNOW THAT."

"Yes. Well. Quite."

"That's not what I mean at all," she says.

"My dear," says the portrait, "Pretend for a moment that I am a hastily drawn left-handed scribble and explain it to me."

Hermione takes a deep breath.

The morning haze has burned off and a fierce sun slants through the tracery. Hermione mentally reviews her to-do list. Soon, it will be time to join Minerva for a walk to the Centaur's clearing, which Minerva has been honored with the task of warding. Then, later, they shall go to Hogsmeade, where Hermione will be expected to make a certain amount of coherent small talk with Harry and Ginny and then, presumably, deal intelligently with whatever Minerva has in mind for a midsummer evening's entertainment and/or deeply significant pagan rite. After which, she'll be off to foreign lands in search of the carefully guarded magical secret that she needs in order to save the world. Or thereabouts.

Hermione takes another deep breath.

"How on earth," she blurts, "Am I supposed to follow YOU?"

"You don't have to follow me," he says.

"Oh, I know," she blithers, "You'll tell me that love is not a competition, that it isn't sensible to compare a living love with a lost one, that I am making unnecessary worry for myself by trying to compare apples to oranges…"

"I won't tell you anything of the sort. I will tell you that you don't have to follow me," the small portrait interrupts.

Hermione is a little abashed to find that she is cradling her face in her hands. This is not working as well as she hoped.

The portrait gives, for something with no visible shoulders, the uncanny impression of a shrug. It is momentarily still, then it says, "I am being called into service elsewhere, I'm afraid. Allow me to leave you with this thought: The most difficult thing about having one's worst fears realized, and surviving, is the tedious necessity of finding all new fears."

Hermione drops her hands to her lap and looks up at the portrait through lowered lashes. "Such as?"

"Perhaps-terrible things happen to wizards who meddle with time?"


	22. The Clearing

Midsummer

There is a power the Dark Lord knows not. Hermione has seen it at work in the unlikely person of Petunia Dursley, seen it abandon poor Fred, seen it spare three Malfoys. She has sheltered in the inscrutable grace conjured by a pair of unlikely lovers right here in this grove.

She squints up at the tops of the great trees that ring the clearing. Summer sun and aging eyes make the treetops jagged black silhouettes against a white sky. Old growth. It is a term that has always fascinated her.

"There was a time I was afraid to know this," Hermione says.

Minerva leans back into the circle of Hermione's arms. "And now?" She whispers.

That is the question, isn't it? _And now, I don't know if I can live up to what you may expect from me. And now, I have no faith in my own worthiness. And now, I still have difficulty imagining what you see in such an unholy mess of a woman._

_And now_, _I screw my courage to the sticking place. _

"And now," Hermione answers, "I want you to tell me more."

Hermione's thumb plays over the bit of robe that hides a nipple. Her lips kiss along a shoulder until they find the soft, sweet flesh just under Minerva's right ear. She nibbles at it as she presses the juncture of her legs more firmly against Minerva's hip.

"Oh, my," Minerva chuckles.

"Yes, well," Hermione pauses in her attentions long enough to rest a cheek on Minerva's shoulder, "Shouldn't I be devastated? Or, at least, appalled? Something other than compelled to tear your robes off? What is the matter with me?"

When Minerva does not answer right away, Hermione answers for her.

"You've been a terrible influence on me. That's the truth of it."

When Minerva still doesn't answer, Hermione strokes softly at Minerva's cheek.

"Love?"

"Yes," Minerva says, fiercely enough to command Hermione's complete attention. "I love you. That's the truth of it." She leans back against the tree trunk they are using for shelter.

"I believe you," Hermione tells her, "And I'm a bit lost."

"As am I," Minerva admits. The fire that briefly flared in her eyes is gone. She waves her hands, as if in dismissal of something that Hermione cannot see, then says, "This place has a peculiar effect on visitors."

"I should think that after thirty-nine years, you'd qualify as a resident," Hermione observes.

Minerva's reply is a great bark of laughter that sets off a rush of unseen scurrying in the underbrush. She cocks her head as if listening. The scurrying dies away. "Did you know," she finally says, "During that whole horrible year, when nobody knew if you were live or dead, that no Death Eater was able to enter here? Not even The Dark Arse himself. They performed their filthy parodies of the Great Rite in the acromantula clearing, pretending among themselves that this one had been polluted by the magic of unclean half-breeds. Those Carrows…"

When Minerva is disturbed, her voice pitches high, her eyes bulge, her nostrils flare and go white, and her body stiffens into a stave of splintery wood. Hermione uses her thighs and arms, belly and breasts, hands and lips to envelop Minerva in softness. She clucks and fusses and settles them into a comfortable position once again. Then, seeking to divert the path of memory away from helplessness and horror, she says, "Teach me this, please. Tell me about the love you made here. I promise to only molest you a little bit."

"Swot," Minerva McGonagall's lips briefly form a smile before Hermione covers them with her own.

It is a serious kiss. Hermione always wants to lead with the tongue, but Minerva keeps her own pace. She brushes her mouth against Hermione's, nibbles at her upper lip, then moves to the lower one. She captures each in turn between her teeth. She teases and nips. She forces Hermione to savor each texture, each flavor, each permutation of breath and friction until Hermione slows down, melts into her lover's arms, gives herself over to being so thoroughly taken. Then Minerva's tongue darts out to taste her, to lap at her, to open her with an assurance and finality Hermione feels in her deepest places. She meets Minerva with her own hunger, her own need to taste and tickle and marvel at the tingling sweetness of rough on rough, of hot and wet and slick.

Before Minerva, kissing was just a way to avoid having to look at one another while the hands roamed round, went places they shouldn't, and did slightly embarrassing things there. With Minerva, a kiss is the entire plot of a shilling romance lived between one breath and the next.

When the kiss is broken, Minerva is quiet until her breathing steadies. She has the look on her face that means she is calculating something, putting facts into order, trying to clear up a mystery that vexes her. Then she whispers into Hermione's ear, "What do you need to hear? That I loved giving myself to him with all my heart, knowing that there was no danger he'd want to keep either my self or my heart for more than a few hours? That I enjoyed being on top? That I swallowed?"

"Ah," Hermione responds. Minerva is right. Something about this place makes concentration difficult.


	23. Twelve FailSafe Ways to Charm Witches

_Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches_, by Jane Puckle, is the go-to book in the romantic conundrums section of Hogwarts library. It is set out on a birch stand that magically restocks each time the book is stolen, which happens an average of four times a week when classes are in session. Minerva maintains that keeping the volume available on a twenty-four-hour a day basis saves school administrators no end of messiness. It also, Hermione suspects, gives Minerva a good chuckle.

Because Minerva knows that Jane Puckle is, in fact, the _nom de canette_ of Hermione Jean Granger.

Hermione wrote the book the summer between her fourth and fifth years. Grimmauld Place could be deadly dull and sneezy when the Order was not meeting. She had free time and a quiet place to work. Hermione remembers her need to explain to Ron-however anonymously-the particular depths of his own ignorance. So she pestered the other members of the Order with the question, "Just what is _wrong_ with boys, anyway?"

This ignited far-ranging conversations with Sirius Black, Nymphadora Tonks, Remus Lupin, Fred and George, Albus Dumbledore, and Minerva McGonagall. Firewhiskey was involved.

Hermione took notes.

She lifts the book and runs her fingers over the light, soft leather of the cover. The pages are gilded at the edges. She allows the book to fall open and reads, at random, a passage. It says:

_Most of what you think you know is probably wrong._

"No shite," Hermione tells it.


	24. Dinner Conversation

"Useless!" Minerva is saying. The food at the Three Broomsticks has improved since Babette took over the kitchen. The tables are filled with happy diners and Minerva must use her teacher-voice to be heard above the convivial din. She has had the most confounding day, and she'd like to know what Harry makes of it. "All afternoon, he'd do nothing but sing 'God Save the Queen' and giggle," she says, "Utterly bloody useless."

"What were you trying to discuss with him?" Ginny asks. She suspects something. The set of her shoulders suggests predation.

Harry takes a great gulp of wine and regards Minerva with polite curiosity.

Minerva responds by sipping her gillywater, pulls a face at the slightly bitter drink, and places her glass on the table with a gentle, deliberate gesture. Only Hermione, she knows, will recognize this as a delaying tactic.

"_A Brief History of Time_. A Muggle book Hermione recently gave to me. Fascinating perspective on the intersection of magic and science, with particular application to transfiguration theory. Shall I owl you a copy?"

_We need to be more circumspect about matters pertaining to time travel, even among our closest friends_, says Hermione's stiff smile.

_I've been doing this far longer than you have, dear_, replies Minerva's thorough immersion in the first bite of her sorbet. Redcurrant and elderflower. Sweet and tart.

"Erm—I'm actually swamped with holiday reading just now. Sounds brilliant, though," says Ginny.

Hermione shifts her attention from Minerva to Ginny with only the slightest lingering glare. "On holiday? In Hogsmeade?" She asks.

Ginny, who is still working on her fresh trout grilled in butter, quickly stuffs her mouth with food. She cocks one eyebrow at Hermione. Minerva cannot decipher the precise meaning of the gesture, fluent as she is in the language of facial hair.

Harry twirls the wineglass in his hand as if it were a wand. He is about to come racing to someone's rescue. But whose? "Geneva was interesting, but we've not had our annual camping trip," he says.

Well, that was unexpectedly politic.

"A romantic getaway to the Forbidden Forest," Ginny adds. She grins. Harry flinches. Minerva scoops up the last bit of sorbet.

"The Forbidden Forest? You can't be serious. _That's_ where you go each year?" Hermione asks.

Minerva's booted foot, under the table, says, _You probably oughtn't go stumbling down this path until you've had time to think._

_This is rot. Why can't I just tell her?_ Asks the bright gleam in Ginny's eye.

Harry's furtive glance across the table says, _I'm not actually sure where to go with this one, Minerva._

_I'll save you,_ Says the timely arrival of the dessert cart.

Ginny's Cheshire cat grin and the slow, sensuous way she drapes her elbow over the back of the chair speak of a woman who has learned to take voluptuous pleasure in the awkward corners of conversation. _On the other hand,_ she is thinking,_ when was the last time I knew something Hermione did not? _"And what are your plans for the evening?" She asks, leveling a direct stare at Hermione.

Hermione is having a series of small epiphanies. "Ah," she says, when the possible reasons for Harry and Ginny's presence on the night of the Great Rite find foothold in her racing thoughts. "Well," she says, then pauses in a blatant attempt to coerce Minerva into answering Ginny's question for her. "Erm," she says, when it becomes clear that Minerva will not. _I'd really like to be anywhere but here just now_, says Hermione's sudden retreat behind the dessert menu.

"Anyone fancy a bit of spotted dick?" Asks Minerva.


	25. Prospect and Refuge

Hermione has never felt particularly safe on the astronomy tower. It cantilevers out from a cantilever, exposes itself to whiplash winds, and gives no promise of shelter. It exposes too much. Tonight, it shows the hills outside Hogsmeade scattered in flame. The Forbidden Forest seems to swarm with a thousand blast-ended skrewts as large fires and small, great bonfires and lanterns, torches and wands gather in a constellation around the centaur clearing. Drums beat a low and slow entrainment. She and Minerva lean against the high ramparts and watch as the rites of midsummer are celebrated all over the countryside.

"It doesn't matter, does it?" Hermione asks.

Minerva wraps them both up in her midnight blue cloak and rests her lips next to Hermione's ear. "What doesn't matter?"

"Midsummer or midwinter, in the clearing, in a tent or in a tower-that isn't the important bit."

"Likely not, no."

Hermione glances up at the stars scattered across a clear black sky. Minerva shifts. Hermione is aware of each place their bodies approach one another through layers of cloth.

"The centaurs are a legalistic lot," Minerva tells her. Her hands find the buttons on Hermione's tunic and slowly release each clasp, starting at the throat. "I find, however, that I am not willing to share you, not even in the context of ritual," Minerva's hands barely brush across Hermione's breast as those nimble fingers work their way down, "Selfish old witch that I am."

Hermione shivers as she shrugs off the opened tunic. There is no one to see them here except the stars and those creatures that fly through the night. And what if they could see? Would she stop? Would she feel ashamed? Would she happily throw herself open to be ravished before the world if that's what Minerva required of her?

She might.

Her small, pink nipples are already hard beneath the thin layer of lace now covering them. When Minerva removes it and drops it from the side of the tower, Hermione's whole body flushes with an unexpected heat. She hears Minerva's low laughter from somewhere behind her. Hermione's hands reach back to tangle in the soft waves of Minerva's long, loose hair. She closes her eyes. The shock of Minerva's teeth sinking ever so gently into the tender places of her shoulder makes her rock back on her feet, lean into Minerva. To balance, Minerva's arms circle round Hermione's exposed belly.

Hermione smiles. She doesn't bother to suppress a giggle. Then, Minerva's warm hands slide up until they cup Hermione's breasts. Her nipples are so hard, it is almost painful when Minerva pinches them both, tugs them slightly, lets them snap out of her grasp with a faint pop. Hermione's breath catches raggedly in her throat. Minerva continues to tease her breasts. She pinches, tugs, pulls to the point of pain and just beyond. Hermione bites her lower lip and lets her lover play. Each time the sting becomes too much, Minerva uses feathery caresses and warm, open palms to soothe the swollen flesh.

"Yes," Hermione says, but Minerva's hands have already moved down to the clasp of Hermione's trousers. It opens so easily at Minerva's touch, Hermione suspects some minor magic. The thought is only just formed when it is driven from Hermione's mind by a bold, strong hand thrust down the front of her jeans. She groans as her soft mound is covered, held, squeezed in rhythm with kisses that mark Hermione's shoulder and neck. Long fingers find their way between the outer folds. Her trousers fall around her ankles. She steps out of them and finds herself pressed up against the smooth, worn masonry of the turret. She braces herself, holds herself up with her arms stiff and straining against the carved coping stones.

The wind is wilder than it was before. Minerva's blue cloak whips away from their pressed bodies. Their hair tangles together on the breeze. Minerva holds Hermione fast against the gust, growls in her ear, "Will you come for me?"

"Yes," Hermione gasps. And Minerva's hands are all over her. They part the cheeks of her ass and trace a line to the wet cleft that waits between her legs. Hermione moves her feet farther apart and Minerva sends two fingers inside her. Her hips push up and back of their own accord, meeting each of Minerva's thrusts in rough imprecision. She bends at the waist, balances on her forearms, closes her eyes and opens herself up to this pleasure. No sooner have the fingers entered her, however, than they have moved on to claim other treasure.

Hermione opens her eyes, looks back over her shoulder, and catches a glimpse of pure glee on Minerva's face as she slides two wet fingers up and over Hermione's slick clitoris. She cries out, breathes through her mouth. Her mind fogs over as the whole world narrows down to one, tiny, impossibly tender point. It doesn't help that her hips want to jerk and buck wildly at Minerva's precise circling. Minerva uses her free hand to push down on Hermione's lower back. It steadies her. She strokes along her flank, moves in close to whisper soothing, calming nonsense. Hermione clings to the sound. Like purring. Like the air itself. _It can't be happening this fast_, she thinks. Then it is happening and she is begging, "Please, please, please…" in a voice that becomes a wail when her mind is ripped free of all other senses and given over entirely to the crashing, consuming pleasure of coming for the one she loves.

At least, that's what happens in Hermione's imagination.

What happens in Hermione's reality is that, just as Minerva has unbuttoned Hermione's tunic and explained that she is not about to go traipsing off to the woods to cavort with a lot of churlish religious fanatics, Minerva pauses. She puts her arms around Hermione and tickles her bellybutton until she squirms and giggles. She kisses her shoulder and says, "You've been walking about all day in a cloud of wrackspurts. Tell me what you are thinking."

Hermione loves the way Minerva's voice, in private, can be soft enough to break a heart. Even the deep timbre of age cannot make coarse its fine, feminine edge, though time has softened Minerva's other edges. Her cheeks are rounder than they were when Hermione first saw them. Her jaw no longer has the sculpted delicacy of youth. But there are still places on Minerva's body that sing of a long, lithe, graceful girl. Wrists. Collarbone. Hip. They make Hermione feel strong and tender and fierce and terribly, terribly privileged.

Hermione thinks through these things silently. Minerva lets her. In Minerva's presence, Hermione seldom feels pressured to speak before she has ordered her thoughts. "I was thinking," she answers at length, "Of leaning over this wall—of watching the fires—while you take me from behind."

The corners of Minerva's mouth twitch into a smile. She wraps her blue cloak even more tightly around Hermione and asks, "With what do I take you?"

"Your hands," Hermione answers. She finds Minerva's right hand and brings the palm to her lips. "These two fingers," she clarifies, kissing each fingertip in turn.

"You are a brave soul, tonight," Minerva says. Her face is all starlight. Once again, Hermione realizes, she has been braced for a scowling rejection.

"And you seem happy," Hermione tells her.

"Oh, I am that. The Great Liberator has finally come for me."

Hermione squirms in Minerva's arms, and looks away. She hopes that her blush is not visible in the dark. "The Great Liberator" is what the Quibbler calls her, habitually, despite her protests. Being in love with a sphinx can be as troublesome as it is exciting, sometimes. Is she being teased? Hermione sorts through the questions that jostle for her mind's attention as Minerva gently kisses her forehead.

"Take off your trousers," Minerva says.

"I'm sorry?"

Minerva's hands move swiftly down to pull apart the buttons. Her lips curl into a long, slow smile. Her wide eyes narrow and her voice dips to a place so deep, it is almost as blue as her cloak. "Take these off," she says, emphasizing each word with a playful tug at the placket.

Hermione takes off her trousers and her underclothes. She has to remove her boots, first. Her bra won't come out from beneath her tunic, so she has to remove the tunic, remove the bra, and shove her arms back into the cotton sleeves to keep the chill from seeping into her bones. She hops a bit to maintain balance and finally lands on her backside atop the coping stones. Minerva watches her fumble through this process with an expression of pure amusement.

When Hermione is once again standing on the cool stones, wearing nothing but her open tunic, Minerva gathers her into the warmth of her arms and says, "It's a good thing you have a decent education, because you'll never survive on your skills as a stripper." This time Hermione's questions must leap from her mind of their own accord, because Minerva shrugs and says, "On a lark with Hooch the Mad. Long ago."

Hermione kisses her because she is the most beautiful thing in this or any other world; because she is just the right height for kissing; and she smells like baking biscuits and woman; she tastes divine; and because being held to her breast feels like the limitless possibility of being in one's own bed in one's own home on a sunny Saturday morning.

When they pull apart and Minerva is looking directly into her, Hermione lets her hands roam under the blue cloak. She trails an appreciative touch down Minerva's spine, traces her hips, kneads the slight swell of a skinny old arse. Minerva, meanwhile, pushes Hermione's hard nipples back and forth with her thumbs. She swallows hard. She playfully tweaks them and moves back a bit to watch them react. She presses each in turn as if it were a button on a machine. She lights up in wonder at the way they bounce back. It becomes harder to stand, harder to think. "Harder," Hermione ventures. A quick, surprised glance up at Hermione's face takes no more than a fraction of a second before Minerva's whole attention is once again caught by two rosy nubbins of flesh. She rolls each nipple between two fingers, gradually increasing the pressure as Hermione's breath quickens and she pushes her hips forward, instinctively seeking more.

"Tell me if it hurts," Minerva husks.

"It hurts," Hermione says, "Don't stop." The lightning generated at each point of contact makes her want to close her eyes and abandon herself to the feeling, but the sight of Minerva concentrating so fiercely on her task, of the way her tongue flicks in and out of her mouth in unconscious imitation of what it would like to be doing to Hermione's breasts, compels her to keep her eyes open and focused. Minerva pinches and tugs and pulls, spellbound and serious. If the blessed sting of her touch weren't making it impossible for Hermione to breathe, she might laugh out loud.

"Good?" Minerva's question is needle-sharp and Hermione is a balloon, bursting at the sound.

"Yes," She hisses. She gathers Minerva's hair in her fists, pulls her head back and kisses her, hard, pushing into her body with a demanding tongue. "Yes," she says, when she comes back up for air, "Good."

When Hermione bends over the stones of the wide, flat first rail, it is colder than she imagined it would be. The granite is rough and gritty on her naked breasts and belly. She tenses against the cold and against the odd angle. Minerva massages the tight muscles of her back. Hands linger a bit at their task. They play lightly over the hard cheeks of her ass, exploring the possibilities of flesh and position. It ends with a playful smack on the bottom, and Hermione smiles as Minerva finds a comfortable way to stand behind her. Long fingers reach between Hermione's legs.

"You are soaking wet," Minerva tells her as she slips each of three fingers, one at a time, into Hermione's slick folds. Hermione is oddly proud. It never used to occur to her that she had any special gift in this regard, but Minerva so treasures her ability to work this particular transfiguration that Hermione cannot help but wiggle the evidence about and moan, or maybe purr, in self-satisfaction. She is rewarded with a fast, rough thrust inside that pushes her hips back down on the stones. "Cheeky," Minerva says, and twists her two fingers in a way that leaves Hermione liquid and panting.

"Up a bit," she says as Minerva's fingers search for purchase in Hermione's innermost recesses. Then when Minerva has found the sweet bundle of nerve endings, she jumps at the sudden arc of electricity, sucks air between her teeth, and says, "Yes. Just there."

Minerva stills her hand, holds it steady as Hermione pushes back against it. She can hear Minerva's breath keeping pace with her own, feel Minerva's mounting excitement in the tension of her free hand as the fingertips dig into Hermione's hip. Soon, there is no way she can control her own thrusts and Minerva resumes her loving exploration of the folds. It seems impossible that Minerva cannot locate the target. Hermione's clitoris is swollen and hard and peeking out beyond her outer lips. No, Hermione realizes, Minerva isn't searching. She is teasing. Hermione groans her joy and frustration. Minerva's touch gradually becomes surer, more precise. Hermione gives herself to the small thrills that signal the inevitability of the larger one. All it takes for Hermione to tumble over that threshold is a tiny push, a reaching out beyond the immediacy of sensation to something—someone—larger than herself. "Minerva," she gasps, "I love you I love you please I love you."

And she explodes. Her body collapses upon the rough stones because her legs are momentarily unable to support her weight. Minerva adjusts to keep the pressure between her legs constant, but Hermione's weight, the odd angle, and the sweaty, come-slick wetness between her legs make it impossible. Her mound throbs, untouched, cooled by an errant breeze and ready for more, even in the aftermath of fulfillment. The next thing Hermione is aware of is Minerva's cloak draped over her shivering body and the fact that someone is laughing aloud.

"You seem happy, as well," Minerva observes.

"Oh. God. Morphine," Hermione says.


	26. Ancient Magic

A/N To my great embarrassment, I accidentally posted the wrong draft of this chapter. This is the corrected version. Except for the Epilogue, it is the last chapter of Ancient Magic. In honor (and blatant imitation) of the great G.L. Dartt, there is a Wonder Wand Warning in effect.

Thank You All,

HMX

* * *

_There are rituals, _Hermione muses_, and there are rituals_.

Hermione has seen Minerva undress before. She does it the old-fashioned way, dexterously working silver fasteners with graceful, practiced fingers. She sheds each item and discards it. Her hat flies off to settle itself on a nearby tree branch, whose dusty leaves shiver under the new weight. Her midnight blue outer robe snaps itself smartly on the breeze once or twice before flinging itself across a low-growing laurel. The silvery inner robes find a vine to drape themselves upon. A white cotton chemise follows. The lingerie, simple and soft and old-fashioned, gathers its ribbons and takes itself off to somewhere unseen, and Hermione imagines that it is a banner waving from some treetop. Minerva doesn't step out of her drawers. She pushes them down below her hipbones, smoothes the fabric down the sides of her thighs, and sits on the softly feathered bed to pull them free.

Hermione slips up behind her on the bed and slides an arm around her waist. She drops a kiss on Minerva's bare shoulder and whispers, "Beautiful."

She can't see it, really, but Hermione is certain that the little shake of Minerva's head is accompanied by raised eyebrows and theatrical eyeball-rolling. "I'm glad you think so," Minerva replies. Hermione mocks her with a growl, and she nips the thin skin at Minerva's shoulder. There is a satisfyingly sharp gasp, the merest twitch of a muscle, and Hermione is running her tongue over Minerva's pulsing jugular vein. Minerva's eyes close. Hermione's hand travels up a long thigh. She tangles her fingertips in the soft, silvery curls.

Hermione uses her fingers to spread Minerva's outer lips. She likes to feel the tender inner parts grow stiff against the cool night air. She dips her head down between Minerva's thighs and blows gently on the tiny pearl at Minerva's center. The scent is spicy. She cools Minerva's hot inner lips with her breath, then she moves in closer to warm them back up in the same manner.

Her reward is a deep, throaty sound-that-isn't-really-a-laugh. It is a code. A signal. It is the acknowledgement of unconditional surrender.

* * *

Minerva hands her a goblet of something sweet and says, "Drink this. You'll feel better."

It tastes of honey and burns her throat, but it cools the fire in her lower back. Conversely, the breeze seems unnaturally warm. The world no longer smells of green or damp or fecund black earth but of musk and magic. Hermione stares at her own hands. _There was a woman here just a moment ago, I'm sure of it_, she thinks. Her tongue flicks out to taste her fingertips. It tickles. Hermione does it again and giggles.

"Ahem."

Hermione looks up. Her eyes dart back and forth in time with the strobing flames of the bonfire.

Minerva is near, standing at the side of the bed, looking as if she might conduct a symphony with the wand in her hand. She throws her head back, spreads her arms wide to the night and whispers in a language Hermione cannot decipher. Long, silvering hair falls down a narrow, pale back. The dark disappears against the light, but the silver catches fire. She is like the trees, now; a jagged black silhouette against a galaxy of stars. Hermione finds the woman—the shape of a woman—in the absence of light. _Someday_, she thinks, _I will be old. I will be lying on a bed like this one, feeling pain drain away like I do right now, when Kali the Destroyer comes for me. And I will recognize her._

Minerva shifts. It is like watching dawn break over a vertical horizon, the way the firelight reaches round to define each contour by the contrast of values. Details emerge: a certain set of jaw, a gestural precision, time-softened curves, and scars like history writ in runes.

Minerva brings the wand down to the juncture of her thighs.

Eyes close. Lips move. Nothing breathes. Intimate flesh opens at the touch of rowan wood. It moves against Minerva's center with the barest thrust of hip. The thickest part of the wood pushes against a dark and straining clitoris and Hermione's fingers tingle with the sense memory of that motion.

She wants time to stop. She wants this image burned into her brain.

Minerva pushes the wand back, tips it down, inserts the delicately carved handle inside her. Gently, slowly, she slips it in and out of her own body.

Hermione's innermost walls contract suddenly, almost painfully. Before she can think about it, she moves her hand down between her legs and pushes two fingers inside just to soothe the ache. She squeezes herself softly. The rhythm, ironically, is calming. This is how Minerva holds her at night, sometimes, when the rest of the world has pulled too hard at her.

Minerva's hands still move. The carved handle of the wand still disappears and reappears. Minerva's hips still rock forward and out, down and back. But her eyes focus on Hermione's small hand.

The hand grows bold. Fingers push in and out of Hermione in time with Minerva's own measure. Hermione opens herself, displays for Minerva's searching eyes. She curls the tip of her middle finger around her clitoris and coaxes it into the firelight. Minerva's unblinking regard burns hot on Hermione's skin.

_Yes, I would_, Hermione thinks. _For her, I would_. There is a power in this, Hermione realizes. There is a power in knowing that you can do the thing you thought you could not do simply because the one you love asks it of you. Her lips peel back into something like a smile.

The wand stills. A quiet descends. Minerva's eyes narrow.

"You're not going to giggle, are you?" Minerva asks.

"I don't believe so," Hermione croaks. When did her tongue turn to cotton?

"Because that would be terribly counterproductive at this point," Minerva whispers.

"I can see how it might be," Hermione says.

Minerva's hands stroke the wand. It remains somehow attached to her swollen labia. Hermione breathes deep of a sudden scent, sweet like damp grass. And in the warm firelight, Hermione watches as the wand sprouts fine, threadlike growth at the base. The threads thicken into living tendrils. Purple-red at first, they turn to palest green as the tips vein softly across Minerva's hips. They hum as they move, whisper-soft, to wrap themselves around Minerva's thighs, over the sharp bones of her hips and around her waist, down the cleft of her ass and back up again, finding the wand once more and encircling it with a single, pale, delicate curl.

Hermione licks her lips. She blinks. "But just to clarify," she says, unable to take her eyes off the wand as it sways between Minerva's thighs, "If I did laugh, would it go all squashy?"

"My wand," Minerva replies, "Does not go _squashy_."

As if to test that assertion, Hermione's fingertips brush themselves along the shaft of cool wood. Minerva hisses through her teeth, and Hermione recoils. "Have I hurt you?" She asks, but a soft, purring laugh pulls Hermione back to awareness of the woman before her.

"Do that again," Minerva says.

Hermione does. Tentatively, mind filling with a thousand strands of unwound memory, she strokes the smooth wood. It twitches in her hands. The wand warms to her touch. It pulls itself into a shorter, more compact shape even as Hermione's fingers take its measure. The wand thickens to fill the space she makes for it. _This is Minerva's wand I hold_, she thinks. _This is Minerva's magic I shape with my hands. _Hermione strokes the warm shaft, runs her fingertips down to the base and gently explores the connection to Minerva's flesh. She slips the tip of the wand into her mouth and holds it there, wonderingly, as it forms a head in response to her circling tongue. It pushes against the roof of her mouth and she pulls back, carefully noting the way it springs from her lips and twitches upward in the open air.

When Minerva pitches slightly forward, whimpering, Hermione catches her and pulls her close.

"That is," Minerva gasps, "That feels," her hands tighten around Hermione's shoulders, "You really _must_ try this."

Hermione presses her lips to Minerva's temple. She tastes salt and blows gently at the strands of hair that have plastered themselves against Minerva's forehead. The wand, heated and pulsing, bobs against Hermione's belly.

"You feel it," Hermione says. She speaks directly to flesh. Her lips brush Minerva's temple with each word.

"Aye," Minerva answers, "I feel it."

"I had no idea this was possible."

"Apparently, it is," Minerva says. The words tumble out in giddy wonder. Hermione strokes the bones in Minerva's back as laughter rumbles through them both.

"I suppose you'll want to be on top," Hermione says.

"Well, you've strained your back," Minerva reminds her.

"Of course," Hermione answers.

* * *

Sinking into Hermione is like sinking into still, smooth, steaming water. Minerva opens her eyes wide and gives herself to be pulled under. To be carried away. To be washed clean.

* * *

Hermione accepts the slight weight with a start of joy. Minerva moves inside her. The feeling is exciting, and awkward, and sweet. There is a yes, Hermione thinks, that is bigger than the ordinary yes. There is a yes whose dimensions can only be encompassed by faith. In time - - when her fingers clutch at Minerva's back, when the muscles of her thighs tense and lock in ecstatic focus, when the flood of her emotions loose themselves in a warm, wet gush - - that is the _yes_ Hermione offers up to this night.

"Yes. Oh my god, yes," she says, and means it.

* * *

So many questions are left unanswered.

But when Hermione tries to ask them, all Minerva will say is, "Hush."

Hermione hushes. It is interesting to her that in all the silly romance novels she has ever read, so much attention and detail is put into the build-up, but nothing is ever written about the aftermath. Of course, in all the silly novels she has ever read, beds are conjured as needed by lovers in passionate embrace. The problem is that bricks, hastily transfigured by distracted witches, tend to go back to the business of being bricks at extremely inopportune moments. The sensible way to cavort in rustic places is to shrink a proper bed and transport it by mokeskin. Minerva, however, has her own methods.

So Hermione watches in sated silence as the tree branches straighten themselves into hat racks. Vines twist into hangers. Hedges solidify into wardrobes, clattering a bit as their doors bang shut. A bower becomes a canopy. Boulders become bedside tables. The sounds of a midsummer night fade and are replaced by the creakings of an ancient castle settling itself into sleep. One by one, the stars fizzle and fall from the sky.

Beltane-in-a-Box. Minerva picked it up half-price at Weasley Wizarding Wheezes Summer Silly Sale. The constellations are modified a bit, but it works out well, Hermione decides.

* * *

Minerva has forgotten enough of love already. The aroused mind does not create long-term memory. It creates many things, most of which take root in instinct. Minerva knows this from a lifetime of sexual activity now recallable only in part, and only in disconnected images. It is similar to how her feline mind stores information. So she quiets herself here in Hermione's arms and finds words to anchor feelings and sensations that are older than language.

_Home. Hot. Happy._ Why do so many vital ideas begin with the sound of a human sigh?

* * *

Hermione picks up the wand, now detached and returned to its usual, though unusually sticky, form. She considers it. "Are we bonded for life now, like in the old legends?"

"There are protective charms that can now be performed, but nothing that cannot wait until morning. Commitment makes the spell work," Minerva takes the wand from Hermione's hand and places it on the bedside table, "No amount of spelling will make a commitment."

Hermione leans her head back on the pillow and stares up at the heavy canopy cloth. "Thank goodness for that," she says. "I don't think I could maintain faith in a world that contains mystical bonding dildos."

It is a glory to love someone who can surprise you, even if the surprise sometimes takes the form of astonishment at the absurd workings of her modern mind. Minerva smiles broadly at her own good fortune. _Thank you_, she tells the universe, then adds, _and_ _it is about bloody time._


	27. Epilogue

Disclaimer: It's Jo's world. We just write in it.

* * *

Each day, Minerva kisses Hermione as she leaves for the Department of Mysteries. "This is the day!" Hermione says, crossing her fingers. Minerva watches as she follows a fistful of flu powder into the green flames of the hearth. Then she sits down to tea and biscuits in the library.

_They marry in Victoria, make love all day in Taos, and quarrel in Alice Springs. Hermione will not set booted foot on Uluru, no matter how important it is to their mission. Time turns. Danger lurks. Guile cannot hold off the enemy forever._

If her hands shake while pouring, it may be that she is an old woman.

_They talk all the way to Sacsayhuamán, stop for tea in Gombe, escape with their lives from Chandraguthi. The adepts of the temple there are under constant threat from a world that begrudges the time, resources, and real estate necessary for the pursuit of spiritual matters._

If the morning hour passes slowly, there are books to distract her.

* * *

This morning, like every morning, Hermione kisses Minerva goodbye and tells her, "This is the day!"

On this day, she lets herself be stripped in the clean room, stuffed into a hideously orange pair of coveralls, and sent on to the main laboratory. They are all waiting for her there. She nods to the crew, and they grin back at her in excitement. On a stainless steel table in the center of the room is a small, shiny object. It is slightly larger than the one Hermione remembers from girlhood, but its general shape is the same. A tiny hourglass is surrounded by a gyroscope and a gleaming web of metal perforated with a starscape. It is lovely.

"Right, then? All ready?" She asks. Each member of her team answers in turn.

"The Trace is cast and the monitoring equipment in place, Madam Granger."

"Calibrations are checked and re-checked."

"Wards are in place."

She nods at each pronouncement. Never taking her eyes from the object on the table, she waves her hand. Quick-smart, she is alone in the room. She lifts the object by a golden chain and places it around her neck. The spring mechanism, as small and delicate as the stem of a watch, is cool to her fingertips. _One. Two. Three_.

* * *

"Expelliarmus!"

Clattering. Rustling. Smoke. Something wet and sticky and warm on one side, something dry and smooth and cold on the other.

Hermione thrashes after her wand, realizing too late that it has been ripped from her hands. She opens her eyes in a burst of adrenaline. The pain that greets this move almost sends her crashing back to the ground, but she scrambles against the slick surface fiercely enough to sit up and remain sitting. The dancing dark blobs before her eyes stop moving and resolve into people-shaped blobs.

"Who the hell are you and how did you get here?" Demands the nearest blob in a voice that almost - - almost - - compels Hermione to reply.

_Oh, Merlin. No._

She blinks several times and finds that she is staring into the business end of a familiar wand. The wand's wielder vibrates with rage. No. Not rage. Battle fury. Barely suppressed, instinctive high alert. From six long years spent fighting on the front lines.

The vibrating blob resolves itself further into a woman, thirtyish, with a thick shock of dark hair pulled severely back and secured with a wide cloth band, preternatural blue eyes, little but long bone and hard sinew in a tweed skirt, white shirt and plaid vest. She advances silently, almost gliding across the tile floor. "Identify yourself or be cursed," says the woman in a deceptively soft, girlish voice. It is clear which option she prefers.

Hermione Granger stares down the raised wand of Minerva McGonagall and says, "My name is Jane Puckle. You are the Bearded Lady. Take me to Merkin the Magician at once."

* * *

_The children join them for a holiday in Kathmandu. They leave Beppu two years younger than they arrive. They cross the steppes in a log cabin on chicken legs_.

Minerva sometimes allows herself to relive past adventures, to follow her memory across maps of the world. Generally, though, she looks forward to the future. If there is a secret to living happily ever after, it is to be prepared for ever after when it arrives.

* * *

A/N Alas, what happens next is another story entirely.


End file.
